Test Setup
Testing Configuration
To power the Titan Z and R9 295X2 we are are using our 6-core Sandy Bridge-E platform. We are still waiting for Haswell-E to arrive to mix it all up!
| Test System Setup | |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-3960X Sandy Bridge-E |
| Motherboard | ASUS P9X79 Deluxe |
| Memory | Corsair Dominator DDR3-1600 16GB |
| Hard Drive | OCZ Agility 4 256GB SSD |
| Sound Card | On-board |
| Graphics Card | NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Z 12GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB AMD Radeon R9 295X2 8GB |
| Graphics Drivers | AMD: 14.6 Beta NVIDIA: 337.91 (GTX Titan Z) NVIDIA: 337.88 (GTX 780 Ti) |
| Power Supply | Corsair AX1200i |
| Operating System | Windows 8 Pro x64 |
What you should be watching for
- GTX TITAN Z vs Radeon R9 295X2 – The two biggest, baddest graphics cards from AMD and NVIDIA go head to head in this battle. We are testing 2560×1440 and 3840×2160 (4K) to really see which can handle the most intense gaming scenarios.
- GTX TITAN Z vs GTX 780 Ti SLI – For NVIDIA fans, this battle might be the most interesting. Can a pair of GTX 780 Ti cards (for $1300) out perform the GTX Titan Z ($3000)?
If you don't need the example graphs and explanations below, you can jump straight to the benchmark results now!!
Frame Rating: Our Testing Process
If you aren't familiar with it, you should probably do a little research into our testing methodology as it is quite different than others you may see online. Rather than using FRAPS to measure frame rates or frame times, we are using an secondary PC to capture the output from the tested graphics card directly and then use post processing on the resulting video to determine frame rates, frame times, frame variance and much more.
This amount of data can be pretty confusing if you attempting to read it without proper background, but I strongly believe that the results we present paint a much more thorough picture of performance than other options. So please, read up on the full discussion about our Frame Rating methods before moving forward!!
While there are literally dozens of file created for each “run” of benchmarks, there are several resulting graphs that FCAT produces, as well as several more that we are generating with additional code of our own.
If you don't need the example graphs and explanations below, you can jump straight to the benchmark results now!!
The PCPER FRAPS File
While the graphs above are produced by the default version of the scripts from NVIDIA, I have modified and added to them in a few ways to produce additional data for our readers. The first file shows a sub-set of the data from the RUN file above, the average frame rate over time as defined by FRAPS, though we are combining all of the GPUs we are comparing into a single graph. This will basically emulate the data we have been showing you for the past several years.
The PCPER Observed FPS File
This graph takes a different subset of data points and plots them similarly to the FRAPS file above, but this time we are look at the “observed” average frame rates, shown previously as the blue bars in the RUN file above. This takes out the dropped and runts frames, giving you the performance metrics that actually matter – how many frames are being shown to the gamer to improve the animation sequences.
As you’ll see in our full results on the coming pages, seeing a big difference between the FRAPS FPS graphic and the Observed FPS will indicate cases where it is likely the gamer is not getting the full benefit of the hardware investment in their PC.
The PLOT File
The primary file that is generated from the extracted data is a plot of calculated frame times including runts. The numbers here represent the amount of time that frames appear on the screen for the user, a “thinner” line across the time span represents frame times that are consistent and thus should produce the smoothest animation to the gamer. A “wider” line or one with a lot of peaks and valleys indicates a lot more variance and is likely caused by a lot of runts being displayed.
The RUN File
While the two graphs above show combined results for a set of cards being compared, the RUN file will show you the results from a single card on that particular result. It is in this graph that you can see interesting data about runts, drops, average frame rate and the actual frame rate of your gaming experience.
For tests that show no runts or drops, the data is pretty clean. This is the standard frame rate per second over a span of time graph that has become the standard for performance evaluation on graphics cards.
A test that does have runts and drops will look much different. The black bar labeled FRAPS indicates the average frame rate over time that traditional testing would show if you counted the drops and runts in the equation – as FRAPS FPS measurement does. Any area in red is a dropped frame – the wider the amount of red you see, the more colored bars from our overlay were missing in the captured video file, indicating the gamer never saw those frames in any form.
The wide yellow area is the representation of runts, the thin bands of color in our captured video, that we have determined do not add to the animation of the image on the screen. The larger the area of yellow the more often those runts are appearing.
Finally, the blue line is the measured FPS over each second after removing the runts and drops. We are going to be calling this metric the “observed frame rate” as it measures the actual speed of the animation that the gamer experiences.
The PERcentile File
Scott introduced the idea of frame time percentiles months ago but now that we have some different data using direct capture as opposed to FRAPS, the results might be even more telling. In this case, FCAT is showing percentiles not by frame time but instead by instantaneous FPS. This will tell you the minimum frame rate that will appear on the screen at any given percent of time during our benchmark run. The 50th percentile should be very close to the average total frame rate of the benchmark but as we creep closer to the 100% we see how the frame rate will be affected.
The closer this line is to being perfectly flat the better as that would mean we are running at a constant frame rate the entire time. A steep decline on the right hand side tells us that frame times are varying more and more frequently and might indicate potential stutter in the animation.
The PCPER Frame Time Variance File
Of all the data we are presenting, this is probably the one that needs the most discussion. In an attempt to create a new metric for gaming and graphics performance, I wanted to try to find a way to define stutter based on the data sets we had collected. As I mentioned earlier, we can define a single stutter as a variance level between t_game and t_display. This variance can be introduced in t_game, t_display, or on both levels. Since we can currently only reliably test the t_display rate, how can we create a definition of stutter that makes sense and that can be applied across multiple games and platforms?
We define a single frame variance as the difference between the current frame time and the previous frame time – how consistent the two frames presented to the gamer. However, as I found in my testing plotting the value of this frame variance is nearly a perfect match to the data presented by the minimum FPS (PER) file created by FCAT. To be more specific, stutter is only perceived when there is a break from the previous animation frame rates.
Our current running theory for a stutter evaluation is this: find the current frame time variance by comparing the current frame time to the running average of the frame times of the previous 20 frames. Then, by sorting these frame times and plotting them in a percentile form we can get an interesting look at potential stutter. Comparing the frame times to a running average rather than just to the previous frame should prevent potential problems from legitimate performance peaks or valleys found when moving from a highly compute intensive scene to a lower one.
While we are still trying to figure out if this is the best way to visualize stutter in a game, we have seen enough evidence in our game play testing and by comparing the above graphic to other data generated through our Frame rating system to be reasonably confident in our assertions. So much in fact that I am going to going this data the PCPER ISU, which beer fans will appreciate the acronym of International Stutter Units.
To compare these results you want to see a line that is as close the 0ms mark as possible indicating very little frame rate variance when compared to a running average of previous frames. There will be some inevitable incline as we reach the 90+ percentile but that is expected with any game play sequence that varies from scene to scene. What we do not want to see is a sharper line up that would indicate higher frame variance (ISU) and could be an indication that the game sees microstuttering and hitching problems.
more accurately result when
more accurately result when putting 780 ti from 1020 palit
or ghz cause 295×2 is already factory overclocked
Two OC’d Titan Blacks if you
Two OC’d Titan Blacks if you need compute. Two OC’d 780 ti s for gaming. Check out the inno ichill 780 ti which runs OC in the high 50s on AIR!!! AMD can only dream with their power hungry space heaters. Titan Z is for the I don’t care what it costs crowd and Nvidia has been pretty good holding that segment.
2 titan blacks stock is fast
2 titan blacks stock is fast then 1 titan z stock. And the titan z is basically 2 titan blacks in one package.
Any info on usable ram? its
Any info on usable ram? its advertised as 12GB, but is all of that usable or is it merely 6GB mirrored?
I don’t like AMD going
I don’t like AMD going outside the power specifications, but that is the only thing that really makes the product make any sense. Nvidia stayed within the 375 W limit, so they have lower performance than the 780Ti in SLI. Given the high price, there isn’t much of a reason for this card to exist.
These dual gpu cards seem to really only be for marketing, rather than a real product. AMD made dual gpus closer to a real product by actually enabling full speed by using water cooling. It still doesn’t make much sense (higher price for same performance) unless you are building a space constrained system. The Titan Z fails at being a marketing/publicity stunt since it obviously can not compete with the 295×2 in performance. AMD and Nvidia want to stay in the public consciousness, even when they do not have a (real) new product to release. These cards will be super low production volume, but they obviously generate a lot of publicity. Since AMD beat them to market with the 295×2, they do not want any publicity, since this has turned to negative publicity.
These dual gpu cards will not really make sense until they actually connect the gpus together to allow them to share memory and act more like a single gpu. To share memory, they need really high bandwidth interconnect (~100 GB/s), which is probably doable between chips so close together. I have been wondering if they could just shrink the memory controller and use the pins for interconnect instead, or even make them programmable to allow the same chip so be used in a single gpu card with full width memory interface or in a multi-gpu card with narrower memory interface. This would also allow use of less memory. Designing and producing such a design may not be feasible right now due to the low volume nature of the super high-end gpu market though. I don’t think it is that useful for the compute market due the way compute gpus are being used (parallel independent task).
So i am glad i built my dream
So i am glad i built my dream machine with 3 gtx blacks that cost me as 1 z. i know it is overpriced, compared to 780ti, which is also overpriced, but running them underwater gave me huge potential for oc and smooth 4k. it was just a dream machine that i don’t plan to swap for the forthcoming years. To my opinion, graphic cards should not be priced more than 400$ i don’t believe there is no room for profit even for the z if this was the price target.. anyway, just an opinion.
Ahaa, its nice conversation
Ahaa, its nice conversation on the topic of this piece of writing at this place at
this web site, I have read all that, so now me also commenting here.
My site … karnisze nowoczesne
Actually after Watchdogs came
Actually after Watchdogs came out it has shown 3gb at Ultra Settings just doesn’t cut it anymore when developers push the limits.
I’m ready to build my Rig soon but tired of waiting for GTX880 with 8gb. If the 880s are not due out until Christmas I may just go ahead with ASUS Strix GTX780 6gb in SLI.
good test!
good test!
I don’t know who made the
I don’t know who made the decision to price this card at $3000. It can’t even outperform AMD’s $1500 card. This card should be sold for $1500 if not less.
As much as I hate to admit it, I think Nvidia would be unstoppable if it capitalizes on the Maxwell GPUs. The 750Ti is an impressive GPU and that was just the tip of the iceberg
They are just about equal
They are just about equal while the 780Ti’s are running at 876Mhz. Too bad you can easily get cards that run 1300 or even 1400 on water. Just imagine the performance gap they would have with +50% clockspeed on the nvidia cards 😀 What a joke
Note: FLOPS are primarily
Note: FLOPS are primarily important to people mining for Bitcoins or for protein folding. It means very little in the way of gaming.
With that being said, I think the only way that the TITAN-Z would pull ahead of other SLI/Crossfire setups is at 8K resolutions because of its immense 12GB of VRAM and 768-bit bus. Even then, I’m not sure that the ROPs, shaders and texture procs on the TITAN-Z would be able to keep up with that resolution.
I honestly think these cards’ target audience is those planning on mining, and that’s why they justify the exorbitant price tag despite the lackluster gaming performance but with a notable increase in teraFLOPS performance.
I’ve seen a bunch of vendors
I’ve seen a bunch of vendors dropping the price significantly on the TitanZ, Alienware had a TitanZ half off promotion and now CyberPower is giving 500.00 off the price. Has this made this card a better value? Trying to price a new system, have about 4g to spend. I do not want to put it together myself or support it, I am laaaaaazy.