Comparisons and Testing Setup
Testing Configuration
Our GPU test bed continues to hold steady, likely until we get a complete new refresh from the AMD team. The keys this time though are what graphics cards are going to be compared to the new GeForce GTX TITAN X.
| 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 X 12GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 4GB AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB AMD Radeon R9 295X2 8GB |
| Graphics Drivers | NVIDIA: 347.84 AMD: 15.13 beta |
| Power Supply | Corsair AX1200i |
| Operating System | Windows 8 Pro x64 |
The TITAN X is a single GPU graphics card, but an expensive one. Our benchmarks will compare the new TITAN X against the GeForce GTX 980 as well as the Radeon R9 290X, the previous top performing flagship graphics cards from both NVIDIA and AMD. But there is another card we included as well: the Radeon R9 295X2. AMD released the R9 295X2 way back in April of last year as a combination of two full performance Hawaii GPUs with some impressive specifications. You get 5632 stream processors, 8GB of graphics memory and over 12 billion total transistors. The issue of course with all dual-GPU graphics cards is that you really are only getting some smaller portion of that performance; it’s just the nature of multi-GPU gaming, whether that be on one card or two. What does not get split though is the TDP; the R9 295X2 has a TDP of 500 watts and in my testing we saw above that several times – AMD even had to put out a list of specific supported power supplies when the card was released.
Pricing is interesting as well for this group. The TITAN X will sell for $999 MSRP, while the rest of the competition is much lower. You can get the GTX 980 for $549, the R9 290X for $359 and even the R9 295X2 for $699. The TITAN X to GTX 980 comparison will be most telling but I know that AMD users and fans of pure raw performance-per-dollar metrics are going to want to see how that $360 Radeon R9 290X and $700 R9 295X2 stack up against NVIDIA’s latest behemoth.
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.
very overpriced for what you
very overpriced for what you get, I was hoping they’d incorporate a 512bit memory interface and stick with double precision
They’re already pushing over
They’re already pushing over 600mm2 on the GPU. They seem limited by what they can do on the 28nm process.
Oh…oh god…MOTHER OF
Oh…oh god…MOTHER OF GOD…
http://www.imagebam.com/image/4dccee397912995.
It seems like most newer
It seems like most newer games work quite well with multiple gpu set-ups. At some point there is going to be little difference between 2 gpus and one gpu at twice the size except price. Two smaller gpus will probably be cheaper since the yield on a ~600 square mm part is not going to be good. For most of the games tested, a multi-gpu system is cheaper and better performing. Power is more, but with multi-gpu systems you are running multiple, independent high speed memory systems instead of a single memory system. Stacked HBM is supposed to be much more power efficient, so multiple smaller gpus with HBM may be the the best option eventually. Both the Titan X and the 390X are going to be priced out of the mainstream market. They are interesting to read about, but I doubt many people here are considering actually buying one.
Performance per dollar is
Performance per dollar is HORRIBLE, this is the card for people who have so much money they honestly don’t know what to do with it.
“As a hardware enthusiast,
“As a hardware enthusiast, it’s impossible to not fall in love with the GeForce GTX Titan X.”
Yes it is. Because despite what your “funny nvidia infomercial”, which you dare call a test, this card is a freaking rip-off.
It’s nothing more than this generation’s GTX580 3GB. Except that one was 550$. It’s gain over previous gen, be it performance or power efficiency, are nothing more than 780 over 580 or 580 over 280.
The fact the GTX 560Ti was 250€ and the 580 3GB 550€, and now the 960 Ti (oop, 980) is 550€ and the 980 (oops, TitanX) 1000€ should make any hardware enthusiast think twice before writing piles of advertising shit.
Wow, angry much ?
AMD
Wow, angry much ?
AMD overclocked one of their stupid bull cpu’s, then sold it on NewEgg for freaking $800.
I was LOL’ing so hard – a bunch of amd fanboys bought it, then it found to be flaky and a supreme power hog, then the price plummeted… to like $300, slightly above the best doggy cpu ad had
I mean how could amd rebrand then raise the price 300% ?
Now THERE’S A RIPOFF ! IT WASN’T EVEN A NEW CPU !
At least nVidia makes a new MONSTER product with MONSTER RAM, instead of overclocking a failed dog then scalping fanboys.
The 295X2 just killed another
The 295X2 just killed another weak Titan.
The 295X2 is still top of the food chain.
The weak Titan X is too weak for 295X2.
AMD continues to bleed market
AMD continues to bleed market share and profits on discrete GPUs.
Nvidia gains market share in discrete and now holds a 76% to 24% advantage over AMD.
http://jonpeddie.com/news/comments/gpu-shipments-marketwatch-q4-2014-charts-and-images
AMD cuts the prices over and over again yet more gamers are choosing Nvidia over AMD.
Nvidia has high margins on the Titans (and they do sell out) whereas AMD has low margins on the 295X2 (2x GPUs, expensive cooling, more layers on PCB, etc) and still can’t get people to buy it. So sad (for AMD).
Fanboys make me laugh. If you
Fanboys make me laugh. If you don’t want what the Titan X offers, don’t buy it. If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it. But laughing and saying the 295X2 is still the best is just stupid. The 295X2 is 12.4B transistors and 600W of power that can only keep itself cool with an unwieldy CLC. AMD’s only selling for 700 bucks because nobody wants them. Is it still the fastest single PCB solution? Well, yes, but only sometimes… only if CF is implemented correctly. The 295X2 comes with so many compromises that nvidia clearly feels like they can charge a $450 premium over the GTX 980, and until AMD has something that can compete directly on a single GPU basis, its going to stay that way. Oh, and a bunch of sketchy leaked slides and rumors about the 390X mean nothing. If you’re using the 390X as proof of AMD’s superiority you’re a joke. Call me when the reviews drop.
PS- owner of 2 290x’s speaking
Prices at this level have
Prices at this level have very little to do with market demand or much of anything else. The volume of these super ridiculous high end cards is so low that they are mostly a marketing tool. Nvidia releases this Titan x with probably 2x the amount of ram that it could actually use and gets a lot of media attention ahead of any AMD releases. They are not going to make much on actually selling these things, especially since it doesn’t have high compute performance. They will certainly have a cut down version of this chip that will be a more reasonable price eventually.
For people actually willing to spend the money on this much performance, the r9-295×2 is still the better deal. I don’t care much about the number of transistors and such. The AMD solution is cheaper and performs better. Most gamers don’t care that much about the power consumption either unless it makes the card excessively noisy. I don’t see much of any reason that a gamer would buy a Titan x over the 295, so why wouldn’t you say that the 295 is still the better card? It seems that most modern games are handling dual gpu fine, and older games probably don’t need this level of performance anyway.
Agreed, despite your being
Agreed, despite your being too cowardly to register.
The transistor counts tell
The transistor counts tell you something about where each company is in terms of technology, but you’re right that they don’t matter directly. Instead it has a knock-on effect for the power and cooling requirements. Despite what AMD fanboys keep telling me, power DOES matter. Installing a CLC is a big logistical pain in the ass and fan speed needs to compensate to keep things cool. I couldn’t stand the fan noise on my 7970’s, let alone the 290X’s so I built a full custom loop just to shut them the hell up. Might not have needed to do that with more efficient cards that can run quieter on air.
And as far as performance, I have lots of recent games that still only use 1 GPU reliably. How many games have serious, sometimes gamebreaking issues at launch with SLI or CF? Happens a lot… flickering textures, stuttering, framerates bouncing all over the place or just straight up crashes. Titanfall and Evolve come to mind immediately. So yea, if everything is working the 295X2 is a better perf/$ card, but its so much more dependent on software that there will always be value in a single GPU solution. How much is up to you, but people who keep squawking about the 295X2 would have you believe otherwise.
So now crossfire always works
So now crossfire always works and amd drivers don’t suck….
SELL IT TO THE CARPETBAGGER BRO.
Stop talking sense!
Stop talking sense!
deleted. Was going to say
deleted. Was going to say deleted self, but that would have been ambiguous.
Yes the 295x has compromises
Yes the 295x has compromises
BUT I want one, but it won’t fit into the cases I own, as I already have watercooling CPU units inside. If they were Air cooled they would be flying off the shelf at that price point. Thats why most AMD ers are just doing crossfire.
PS. (I run AMD and Nvidia)
Priced here in Ireland @ 1250
Priced here in Ireland @ 1250 euros (Including tax 23%).
I want one, (Well 2 in SLI), but not ever at that price.
980 TI is basically going to be this card with less ram and speed aligned as to what the AMD 390x does. Prob june/july
So wait and see, seems to be the thing to do.
(If rumors are true then the TITAN X is about AMD 390x speeds)
PS. Never seen so may review cards issued………..
PPS. Guess I didn’t win the draw………..secret word was dress (Red)
I see a future with 3-phase
I see a future with 3-phase 208 and liquid nitrogen tanks.
Comon guys, Titan X
Comon guys, Titan X benchmarks on vanilla Skyrim? 🙁 Nobody buying Titan X is going to care about vanilla Skyrim performance on 1440p. Maybe 4k vanilla, but better, 1440p with mods.
Want to post a score for EVGA
Want to post a score for EVGA super-clocked version of this card. With factory settings and without additional overclocking I got on Fire Strike Extreme: Score: 8281, Graphics score: 8884 which is about 10% higher that reference card.