GTX 980 SLI @ 1.45 vs TITAN X @ 1.45. for 1600P

Whach

Whach

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 22, 2011
Messages
1,244
Question stands as is. short and sweet. I don't intend on using my current system for 4k or using 4k any time soon. If and when I do, a new rig will be built. 1600p for now.

I'm thinking of replacing my 980 sli system for the Titan X if they perform similarly when OCd.
The reason I'm considering this is because of the benefits of a single Gpu setup. My sli setup is great , but of course it has does have some issues as a multi card setup. Costwise, there is little impact in switching to a Titan x.

Opinions appreciated :)
 
OC'd 980 SLI is faster than an OC'd Titan X for sure. An OC'd Titan X sits between a 970 SLI and 980 SLI setup most of the time and can sometimes exceed 980 SLI in some games. You just have to weigh the pros/cons of the decision and accept that you most likely will lose performance by switching to a single Titan X but reap the benefits of a single card vs multigpu.
 
That would be a tough one for me. Technically you could get away selling those 980s and almost paying nothing for the titan, then grab a used titan later on
 
I would most definitely go single GPU in this case. Even though you will get a few less FPS, you're experience will be smoother and less hassle with drivers.
 
Single card > SLI in my opinion.

I would wait until the 980TI comes out. Same amount of cores as a Titan X. Clocked higher. Only thing is 6gb of memory over 12.

Just my opinion.
 
If 980 sli isn't good enough for thst res then a single titan x will be worse. I guess it will be start figuring out if 2k is out of the question for you.
 
eclypse said:
If 980 sli isn't good enough for thst res then a single titan x will be worse. I guess it will be start figuring out if 2k is out of the question for you.
Click to expand...

As I said, SLI is good. It would just be easier with one powerful GPU. That is what I'm trying to ascertain. I would sell my 980's and purchase a Titan X, IF the performance was similar. It would be more of a side-grade if so. SLI 980's are more than adequate for 1600p.

I just wish there was more of a comparison at my resolution. I've been trying to piece together an idea by looking at various reviews and comments at 1440p. Still trying to reach a decision given the circumstances. Keep the opinions coming!
 
Whach said:
As I said, SLI is good. It would just be easier with one powerful GPU. That is what I'm trying to ascertain. I would sell my 980's and purchase a Titan X, IF the performance was similar. It would be more of a side-grade if so. SLI 980's are more than adequate for 1600p.

I just wish there was more of a comparison at my resolution. I've been trying to piece together an idea by looking at various reviews and comments at 1440p. Still trying to reach a decision given the circumstances. Keep the opinions coming!
Click to expand...

I just switched from a 980 sli to a single Titan X. I game at 1440p so it should be comparable to your setup and I do not regret it at all. My overall frames have dropped but game play is noticeably smoother. Not to mention no more sli bugs from the games that I play. The performance is definitely similar.

No game I've played has dropped to non playable framerates (below 40fps) at all and I play with everything on the highest settings. If you want I can also list the games I used to compare the cards.
 
Last edited:
gladesmellzgood said:
I just switched from a 980 sli to a single Titan X. I game at 1440p so it should be comparable to your setup and I do not regret it at all. My overall frames have dropped but game play is noticeably smoother. Not to mention no more sli bugs from the games that I play. The performance is definitely similar.

No game I've played has dropped to non playable framerates (below 40fps) at all and I play with everything on the highest settings. If you want I can also list the games I used to compare the cards.
Click to expand...

Fantastic! That would be great. Are you running it OC'd?
 
I'm driving a slightly higher Megapixel screen (3440x1440) with one Titan X and I am questioning why I bought two. If your goal is 60 Hz I think you'd be happy with it. So far only played BF4, Borderlands 2, Farcry 4 with it. BF4 and BL2 I actually DSR from a much higher res with all settings on. If I am happy with the FPS driving 25% more pixels it should be acceptable to you.

My rule of thumb is never go multicard if there's a single GPU more powerful. I went single 980 over SLI 970s and go to chuckle at all the people with SLI issues. If you have no place else to turn for more FPS then I go multiGPU. Which is probably what you did with your 980s at the time.
 
Whach said:
Fantastic! That would be great. Are you running it OC'd?
Click to expand...

Yeah I always OC. I bought the EVGA SC version hoping to get a cherry-picked card. Sadly mine only clocks 1.39ghz and my mem is at 8ghz. My 980's OC'ed very good at 1.5 stable in game.

The games I used to benchmark with were Lords of the Fallen, Shadow of Mordor, Dying Light, Dragon Age Inquisition, Crysis 3, Far Cry 4, and Watch Dogs.

In all the games other than Watch Dogs I got more FPS with the 980's on AVG about 15 frames. SLI is really broken in Watch Dogs so my FPS was actually less and in Dragon Age there was this crazy SLI bug where it made all this extra fog in game.

Even though I'm getting less frames I still consider it a good side grade in performance since I'm getting rid of SLI problems. Not to mention that ridiculous 12GB of frame buffer I'm excited to mod Skyrim with the highest resolution textures possible.
 
Last edited:
The only game so far I've played on my 989 sli that I felt I was screwed playing maxed out settings is so far titan fall Which I just tried the other day even though I've mastered it on the xbox one.Problably 4GB VRAM limit.

If one is looking for only for 60hz I'd say fine For a single titan but even at 1440 bf4 mp would go down to 50-60fps durring explosions and even with my g-sync monitor I could notice it. Would run around 80-100 and then bam..

980 sli made everything perfect and life like smooth. Pegged at 144 max with g-sync enabled and would now only drop to 110-120 fps under explosions.

Shadow of mordor and dying light it made a big difference.

To each there own I guess. I've run multiple cards since the nvidia 6800 I believe.. even had sli with dual 3dfx voodoo 2 12 mb carda. hehe.
 
If this helps, here's what you can potentially do with a good Titan X sample. This is from one of mine I just ran earlier at 1.5 GHz: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/4514846

oGerWkH.jpg
 
lavaheadache said:
Dang..... here's my Z with a little OC. http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6528254
Click to expand...

Heh pretty crazy to see a generation of Titan later and the new one beats 2x of the predecessor! And what's especially amazing to me is NVIDIA pulled it all off on 28nm AND the new one OC's like mad (40-50% OC). AMD has no chance in hell, all NVIDIA has to do is get an AIB made GM200 with higher clocks and R390x is DOA. They'll have to play the price/performance game again and keep hemorrhaging money.
 
The fastest I've ever gotten @ 1.5

The graphics score hovers around 27k-28k for the most part - of course the cpu scores should be ignored as it skews the comparisons being made. Then again, real world game benchmarks and performance are always better : )
 
5150Joker said:
AMD has no chance in hell, all NVIDIA has to do is get an AIB made GM200 with higher clocks and R390x is DOA. They'll have to play the price/performance game again
Click to expand...

Saying it's DOA is a little hasty. Until it's released, it's all speculation, as it always is until release and review.
 
I have used both configs in my setup. Ended up selling off the Titan X (Sold off for $200 profit)and getting 2 used EVGA 980's for $850. I think the Titan X overall is the best card for just about any setup, I am more then happy with snagging some cheap 980's for now.
 
AthlonXP said:
I have used both configs in my setup. Ended up selling off the Titan X (Sold off for $200 profit)and getting 2 used EVGA 980's for $850. I think the Titan X overall is the best card for just about any setup, I am more then happy with snagging some cheap 980's for now.
Click to expand...

Why did you make the switch? Cheaper ? Since the switch, which setup have you been happier with in terms of performance?
 
Whach said:
Why did you make the switch? Cheaper ? Since the switch, which setup have you been happier with in terms of performance?
Click to expand...

To be honest both setups played with the same setting smooth as butter.
 
I am in a similar position with 780's SLI (not Ti)...the recurring occasional irritation of SLI gets annoying...I am a several generation SLI person and it isn't that bad...but several games I am done playing before they get decent SLI support...most recently Dying Light. I could easily go for a new Titan...I will see what the new AMD card and the 980Ti can do first though...just hard to justify the rush at this point for me personally.
 
schoenda said:
I am in a similar position with 780's SLI (not Ti)...the recurring occasional irritation of SLI gets annoying...I am a several generation SLI person and it isn't that bad...but several games I am done playing before they get decent SLI support...most recently Dying Light. I could easily go for a new Titan...I will see what the new AMD card and the 980Ti can do first though...just hard to justify the rush at this point for me personally.
Click to expand...

I may hold out at this point. Opinion seems divided. Biding my time may prove to be the best option, at least until the end of summer when hopefully the market has been fully revealed.... I'm looking at AMD and the rumoured ti version. Decisions decisions....
 
Im running exactly that 1600p and switched to Titan X from 980 SLi and i love it i have it at 1450mhz exact same speed i had my 980's.
Everything is smooth as butter i might of loss some FPS here and there but 1450mhz Titan X is beast its really close to SLi but with constant SLi performance, you know what i mean when those SLi don't work you stuck with only one 980 while here you get non-stop SLi speed, not to mention 12gb Vram we know its overkill but its there :).

Just go for it, plus you will always be able to go SLi if you ever need more performance, Single Titan X can max absolute any game at 1600p on Ultra settings, was pushing BF4 at 120fps with 4xMSAA.
 
schoenda said:
I am in a similar position with 780's SLI (not Ti)...the recurring occasional irritation of SLI gets annoying...I am a several generation SLI person and it isn't that bad...but several games I am done playing before they get decent SLI support...most recently Dying Light. I could easily go for a new Titan...I will see what the new AMD card and the 980Ti can do first though...just hard to justify the rush at this point for me personally.
Click to expand...

I seen a huge improvement in Dying Light once going to SLI. Large speed difference. If you looked at Hardforums review of it something must of been wrong on his end. I reported my findings and so did many others saying that SLI was working and scaling well in that game.. You might be just having a running out of ram issue.
 
gamingarena23 said:
Im running exactly that 1600p and switched to Titan X from 980 SLi and i love it i have it at 1450mhz exact same speed i had my 980's.
Everything is smooth as butter i might of loss some FPS here and there but 1450mhz Titan X is beast its really close to SLi but with constant SLi performance, you know what i mean when those SLi don't work you stuck with only one 980 while here you get non-stop SLi speed, not to mention 12gb Vram we know its overkill but its there :).

Just go for it, plus you will always be able to go SLi if you ever need more performance, Single Titan X can max absolute any game at 1600p on Ultra settings, was pushing BF4 at 120fps with 4xMSAA.
Click to expand...

I see that you are using Titan x's in sli. Were you talking about bf4 in sli or single card performance? Dual titan x's i'm not considering at the moment : )
 
eclypse said:
I seen a huge improvement in Dying Light once going to SLI. Large speed difference. If you looked at Hardforums review of it something must of been wrong on his end. I reported my findings and so did many others saying that SLI was working and scaling well in that game.. You might be just having a running out of ram issue.
Click to expand...

Who knows...I was getting better fps but jerky at times, mostly when certain effects like the slimers were shooting at me, overall it ran great on one 780 but just not as well on SLI, despite overall better fps. Oh well...Done with that game now anyway.
 
Whach said:
Whoa. Thanks! Great comparison = )
Click to expand...

As you see OC Titan at around 1425 beats OC 980SLi in almost every single game, forget about synthetic benches just look at the game performance like the above video shows.
 
Last edited:
Titan X was way more consistent than SLI 980s. Thanks for that video. All it needed extra was the frametime charts eurogamer uses.

It doesn't matter if avg. or max is higher, if you get spots with consistent lows that's enough to make you drop settings. Even Crysis 3 had some lows and that game is known for good scaling.

But whats that % GPU usage? Seems to never be pegged? Is the system bottlenecked someplace else at 1080P? It was a 4790k @ 4.9...
 
Last edited:
Always go single card when you can. What most of these benchmarks are not showing is the minimum frame rates. SLI is great for boosting max and average frame rates, but the minimums are just as bad, if not worse than single card.

I debated going with 2 980's over a Titan X. I've been using dual GPU's since early 2011. I'm tired of having to deal with profiles and finding fixes for games that aren't working correctly with dual GPU's. Not to mention the heat, my god the heat! And the noise. That said, I don't think we are quite there yet with a single card being enough for 4K

Just ordered a Titan X...
 
Funny you say noise when i picked another 980 up just to make the one quieter. Figured 2 at stock wold be quieter then one runing full tilt and loud fans.

Didn't work out as planed cause I still overclocked up to 1500/8000 but yet it ended up quieter anyways cause the 2nd card muffled the top card! HAHA.

Anyways I figured why spend $160 for a water block, $100 on a rad and a $100 on a pump and $50 on a res totalling $400 plus tubing and fittings and coolant.. I'd rather blow thst much on another 980 and make everything faster!

Still yet to feel the need to hunt down sli profiles. Haha
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top