Sound Testing, Pricing and Closing Thoughts
We ran the reference cooler on the new Titan X through our standard noise testing.
Under a full load, the new Pascal-based Titan X is not a quiet card – it is louder than the GTX 1080 Founders Edition and basically matches the sound performance of the GTX 980 Ti. This just makes sense – the coolers are nearly the same and the 250 watt TDP means that the work load is essentially identical.
Pricing and Availability
I mentioned it on the first page: the NVIDIA Titan X based on Pascal is only sold through NVIDIA.com and is priced at $1200.
- NVIDIA Titan X (Pascal) 12GB – $1200
- GeForce GTX 1080 8GB – $599/$699
- GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB – $649 (prior to GTX 1080 announcement)
- Radeon Fury X 4GB – $629
- GeForce GTX 980 SLI 4GB – $999 (prior to GTX 1080 announcement)
Even with prices on the GeForce GTX 1080 staying ABOVE $699 since launch, the Titan X is a significant price increase over the current market. For $500 more, you get 12GB of GDDR5X instead of 8GB, and a ~35% increase in performance over the GTX 1080. The Titan X isn't going to win any value awards and it won't win in any graph of performance per dollar either. The Titan X comes in $200 more than the last Titan X launched at (which is a curious and infuriating practice to be sure) but for gamers or GPGPU nuts that want the very best, you can't argue with the results.
Closing Thoughts
As we have said with all previous NVIDIA Titan reviews, this is not a card for the budget minded. It's for people that have more money than time, more money than they need. Or maybe you just value PC gaming above anything else in your life – and that's fine, I was there once. Before a wife, and kids… If you worry about how much you are spending on your gaming PC, do not buy the Titan X!
However, if you want the very best and you want it right now, you can't do any better than the new Titan X based on Pascal. It is 15-40% faster than the GeForce GTX 1080 based on GP104, a card that took the flagship title itself just a little over a month ago! If you are an owner of a GTX 980 Ti, you'll find the Titan X to be a 40-80% performance improvement with the higher end of that range kicking in if you are playing at 4K.
Do we expect there to be a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti at some point that might split the difference between the GTX 1080 and the new Titan X? Yes. When? No idea – it could be next week the way NVIDIA is pumping out GPUs! If you would be pissed if a 12GB 1080 Ti was released in August with slightly less performance for $999 – don't buy the Titan X.
One area that I think needs some attention – AMD's lack of competition on the high end is starting to get ridiculous. In every game we tested, except Hitman, the Titan X is 70-120% faster than the fastest single GPU AMD graphics card, the AMD Fury X. Obviously, there is a process technology gap, a cost gap, and a timing gap – but AMD is falling not just slightly behind, but PAINFULLY behind NVIDIA when it comes to flagship performance. The Radeon RX 480 is a great card and gives AMD a competitive option at the $250 price point but there are plenty of gamers buying at higher prices, where margins are fattening NVIDIA up to do this battle again in 12-18 months.
At the end of the day (and I am 9 minutes from that as I type this), the new NVIDIA Titan X based on the Pascal GP102 GPU is the fastest graphics card on the market, period. If you want the best, and have the wallet to support your addiction, you can't get anything better than this.
Ryan, too bad there is no
Ryan, too bad there is no benchmark of other games such as Six Siege, Overwatch etc.
Think that many of these games is crucial to people if they are seriously buying this GPU.
I know you can’t benchmark every game, but should atleast go for the most popular ones.
Ryan, first off – THANK YOU!
Ryan, first off – THANK YOU! You and your staff did an outstanding job putting together this review. I can easily see there was a lot of work done here. I also understand that not every review is perfect, so I may be a bit more forgiving with regards to any mistakes made – though I really didn’t see any and you approached this review with a ‘just the facts’ mentality. Some things I would like to make note of based upon the information and data provided within your Titan X review, other reviews I have read thus far, and my current PC hardware configuration (two GTX980Ti cards in SLI):
1) Titan X performance is near the performance of two GTX980Ti cards in SLI, let alone two GTX980 cards, which by the way can’t even achieve correct playable frame rates at 4K resolutions due more to the limitation of the VRAM (only 4GB each card).
2) Almost 50% of games today do not scale well with 2-way SLI. 3-way and higher is even worse. This alone is a valid argument for those seeking the best performance without all the technical issues that SLI induces to buy a Titan X. Using a single card means no micro stutter, frame rendering lag, required need for a SLI HB bridge, and of course the fact that double the performance is not achieved in 99% of games currently on the market.
3) A single GTX1080 can not play a vast majority of games at 4K resolutions without having to turn down some settings, and buying two GTX1080 cards to do so will cost you as much as a single Titan X AND you will still have the issues induced by SLI, especially more so with DX12 games.
Based upon these observations, one would conclude that if you are an avid enthusiast PC gamer and play games at the higher resolutions, the Titan X is the best buy for the returned level of performance and least amount of technical issues and limitations associated with running two or more cards in an SLI configuration. One could also argue that if there were a need to ‘grow’ in performance capability, then worst case you could always add a second Titan X card 😉
FP16 performance in GP102 is
FP16 performance in GP102 is just 1.5% of FP32 performance.
This year GPUs will be up to twice as efficient!