NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN 3-Way SLI Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
Staff member
Joined
May 18, 1997
Messages
55,598
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN 3-Way SLI Review - We follow-up with a full evaluation of GeForce GTX TITAN 3-way SLI in today's latest games. We will compare GTX TITAN 3-way SLI to GTX 680 3-way SLI and Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3-way CrossFire in a triple-display setup at 5760x1200. Find out what it takes to run Crysis 3 maxed out across three displays.
 
Last edited:
Titans are beast for sure! Just 1000.00 per GPU is hard to swallow for most ppl.

Very good review [H] !
 
It's arguable as to whether 3x Titan is worth 3k+, but you can't argue with the numbers!
Really a shame that even with AMD's up and coming 7990, their top end halo product won't be able to keep up with Nvidia's.
Maybe their magic memory drivers will help a tad if they exist.
 
Hard drive used in the testing: Western Digital 640GB Caviar Black

"In our experience Far Cry 3 seems to have a natural propensity to give the gamer a stuttery feel. We find this with every video card and Far Cry 3, and it seems to simply be a game issue."

Would using an SSD have any effect on this, and on the framerate variation you observe in most games at these extremely high graphics settings? I notice in HardOCP's recent SSD reviews that games are not even tested.

I should mention that SSDs most certainly do assist hugely with reducing stutter in Skyrim and Oblivion (and presumably Fallout 3), but has been generally remarked to have little or no effect in other games at single-monitor resolutions, but I wonder about extreme tests like these.
 
It's too bad that the GPUs on Titan aren't fully enabled. Unfortunately, such a thing would probably whack the overall chip yield squarely in the nuts and make the cards even more scarce than they already are...perfect dies that size would be rare.;)
 
I just calculated how many months I would have to live off of biscuits and water just to be able to afford this setup with my current wage.

... I should not have done that.


Maybe post some screenshots of the screens in action, I sure wouldn't mind seeing that. ;)
 
lutjens said:
It's too bad that the GPUs on Titan aren't fully enabled. Unfortunately, such a thing would probably whack the overall chip yield squarely in the nuts and make the cards even more scarce than they already are...perfect dies that size would be rare.;)
Click to expand...

Considering multiple [H] forum goers are reporting ~60% ASIC quality on their gpu-z readings, its pretty clear most of the Titans are truly Telsa rejects and not just rebadged products that were sold cheaper.
 
Wow my newly arrived 55.1% ASIC quality 7950 must be a real turd...lol.
 
dragonhawke said:
Considering multiple [H] forum goers are reporting ~60% ASIC quality on their gpu-z readings, its pretty clear most of the Titans are truly Telsa rejects and not just rebadged products that were sold cheaper.
Click to expand...

I don't think even the Tesla K20X has all units enabled...AFAIK both the K20X and Titan are functionally the same. I'm unaware of any NVidia GK110 product that has everything enabled. It was probably done that way on purpose by NVidia to give them the wiggle room on yield, which would be fairly significant wiggle room. Having spare units on the die makes the die larger, but makes it far more salvageable should a defect occur. Indeed, depending on where the defect occurs, the die may actually have multiple defects, and due to the redundancy of having spare units, still make it as a Titan or K20X.

A fully functional version is possible and would be very cool, but isn't very likely.
 
Maaaaan I wish I lived a financially independent life and was able to build some crazy "this is going to last me 5+ years" rig with these..

..and a good supply of high-hz 1080p CRTs :eek:
 
AARGH! said:
The intent I believe was to push these cards to the limit, that would be kind of half-assing it, at that resolution and a huge waste of time..
Click to expand...

He is asking for a 7680x1600 review with the three Titans. Now THAT would be full-assing it!
 
AARGH! said:
The intent I believe was to push these cards to the limit, that would be kind of half-assing it, at that resolution and a huge waste of time..
Click to expand...

3 2650x1600 monitors wouldnt be pushing it to the limit??
 
evilsofa said:
Hard drive used in the testing: Western Digital 640GB Caviar Black

"In our experience Far Cry 3 seems to have a natural propensity to give the gamer a stuttery feel. We find this with every video card and Far Cry 3, and it seems to simply be a game issue."

Would using an SSD have any effect on this, and on the framerate variation you observe in most games at these extremely high graphics settings? I notice in HardOCP's recent SSD reviews that games are not even tested.

I should mention that SSDs most certainly do assist hugely with reducing stutter in Skyrim and Oblivion (and presumably Fallout 3), but has been generally remarked to have little or no effect in other games at single-monitor resolutions, but I wonder about extreme tests like these.
Click to expand...

Tried to run FC3 on my SSD and for me it felt like it stuttered more than on my RAID0 Samsung Spinpoint F1s. I'm using a Samsung 830 256GB. So back it went to the array. I'm not playing at such an uber resolution though -- 2560*1440. I dunno.:confused:


fixed, thanks - brent
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Man.....

That's some cash on that table right there. :eek:

The winner was never in doubt.

Honest review.
 
Holy.
Fucking.
Shit.


This article is worth it just for the pics of hardware porn.

Thanks guys, [H]ardest review in a long time!
 
Great review, can always count on you guys to go to the edge.

So if for some reason I picked up a new 4k tv then this is what I need to game on it.
Guess my htpc isnt gonna cut it...
 
Awesome review. Titan's freaking rock the house in Tri-SLI.......they better for $3K.
 
I am going to pick up $3k R5 GT Turbo (i am in Eu) with 180ps and 6 sec to 60mph and have some fun and the best thing is I will sell it for same if not for more after one year if i dont crash it. PC gaming is becoming to expensive and I cant keep up with it so back to basics..

Nice review, guys.

Titan LE is my last hope...
 
RadXge said:
Yeah, using 4GB 680 would make more sense at this resolution (while still being much cheaper than Titan).
Click to expand...

I agree. I would have liked to see the 4GB 680 flavor in this just for giggles to see where they stack up
 
Can we at least get that same cooler or a variant of it on other lower end and more affordable cards? Just sick looking and it cools well.
 
runudownquick said:
It's arguable as to whether 3x Titan is worth 3k+, but you can't argue with the numbers!
Really a shame that even with AMD's up and coming 7990, their top end halo product won't be able to keep up with Nvidia's.
Maybe their magic memory drivers will help a tad if they exist.
Click to expand...

There is a newer set of AMD drivers out that people are reporting sizeable min fps gains and thus higher average fps over on Guru3d.

I haven't tried them on my 6870s yet, but I haven't really been playing games lately wither.

One thing is for sure, I refuse to spend more than about $200 per video card. I only game at 1080p though, so a couple of 6870s is more than enough.
 
I would have to sell my car to afford these plus the proper monitors. :(
 
Kudos on a very thorough review. Stuff like this makes me want to try a multi monitor setup.
 
Methadras said:
I would have like to have seen the performance on 30" displays.
Click to expand...

The size of the dsiplay makes no difference. It is the resolution.

An 80" 1080p screen is going to take the same amount of GPU power as a 23" 1080p screen, provided they both either run at the same refresh or have v-sync disabled, or have triple buffering enabled.
 
Did you guys ever try any 4-way Titan SLI? I'm curious if the SLI performance scales as well with 4 cards.

Truly insane performance with 3 of these. Too rich for my blood unfortunately. $1000 is about my limit for GPUs.
 
I remember when I thought I was playing with the big boys when I spent about 900 on two 680s. Nvidia just threw all that out the window with a single gpu card at 1k.
 
cyclone3d said:
The size of the dsiplay makes no difference. It is the resolution.

An 80" 1080p screen is going to take the same amount of GPU power as a 23" 1080p screen, provided they both either run at the same refresh or have v-sync disabled, or have triple buffering enabled.
Click to expand...

Yes, that is exactly what he meant. 30" screens with 1080 resolution. Thank you for clarifying that.
 
roki977 said:
I am going to pick up $3k R5 GT Turbo (i am in Eu) with 180ps and 6 sec to 60mph and have some fun and the best thing is I will sell it for same if not for more after one year if i dont crash it. PC gaming is becoming to expensive and I cant keep up with it so back to basics..

Nice review, guys.

Titan LE is my last hope...
Click to expand...

How much are track fees? Or are you planning on driving like an asshole on public streets?
 
Rizen said:
Did you guys ever try any 4-way Titan SLI? I'm curious if the SLI performance scales as well with 4 cards.

Truly insane performance with 3 of these. Too rich for my blood unfortunately. $1000 is about my limit for GPUs.
Click to expand...

Check out Vega , a [H] user. He has 4-way sli titans.
 
Rizen said:
Did you guys ever try any 4-way Titan SLI? I'm curious if the SLI performance scales as well with 4 cards.

Truly insane performance with 3 of these. Too rich for my blood unfortunately. $1000 is about my limit for GPUs.
Click to expand...

I never had 4 Titan's, and now I don't even have 3 anymore. I think temperature would really start to be a problem with that many, that many cards sandwiched together means tight quarters, less cooling, and as we all know on TITAN cooling is everything, this could impede their clock speeds, GPU Boost will clock down, unless you can introduce some extreme cooling.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top