Are you "that guy"—the extreme gamer or hardware hoarder who always has to have the absolute fastest? There's no need to be ashamed: Just get out your full-to-bursting wallet, sign over your tax refund, or cancel that summer vacation, because it's hardware put-up-the-money time. Nvidia touts its new GeForce GTX Titan video card as the fastest single-GPU desktop graphics card ever. The company goes so far as to position this hyper-card as a key component to building the world’s first “gaming supercomputers.”
Drooling yet? We bet you are, but be warned: Get ready for more than just sticker stock—brace yourself for a sticker lightning bolt. The GTX Titan may notch up performance, but this über-card also boosts the entry fee to run in the extreme-GPU-performance stakes. The GTX Titan card itself costs $1,000, and boutique computers containing one, two, or three Titans cost much, much more. (Factor in a kilobuck per card, plus, well, the PC itself.)
Of course, this isn’t the first gaming card Nvidia has introduced at that luxury price point. The GeForce GTX 690, which is still available, retails at the same price, and in fact outperforms the Titan in some tests. But the GTX 690 is a dual-GPU card—that is, it has two of Nvidia's GK104 GPU units onboard, the same ones that are on the GeForce GTX 680, the single-GPU speed leader of not that long ago. As a result, the GTX 690 is a huge, demanding card whose design levies hefty power and cooling requirements, and doesn't lend itself to use in smaller, quiet PCs. The GTX Titan is no shrinking-violet card either, to be sure, but it's designed to operate in much tighter quarters.
A second consideration is with multiple video cards. (After all, you're in for one $1,000 video card...why not make it two or three?) You can combine a pair of dual-GPU GTX 690 cards to create a quad-SLI performance powerhouse, but the GTX Titan can be used in a triple-SLI configuration that, according to Nvidia's internal testing, is even faster. (We were not able to put this extreme-PC assertion to the test with GTX 690 cards, alas.) When you factor in the GTX Titan’s quieter, cooler performance, you realize these are actually two very different cards, for different needs, but at the same price point. They address different segments of the market in their own ways.
Along with the fastest single-GPU performance, the GTX Titan enables fast GPU-accelerated double-precision math support, the first time this feature from the company’s professional Tesla cards has appeared on a consumer model. It’s primarily of interest to developers, researchers, and students (you’re not likely to see games make use of it), but if the feature appeals to you, the GTX Titan offers a cheaper point of entry to high-precision GPU computing than the company's $2,000 to $3,000 Tesla cards.
Three Titans in a triple-SLI configuration. (The dual-GPU GeForce GTX 690 supports "only" two cards.)
Note that the GeForce GTX Titan doesn’t herald the next generation of cheaper, mainstream graphics cards. The GTX Titan is based on the same Kepler architecture as the GeForce 600 series, but it boosts performance by bringing the massive design of Nvidia’s professional chips down to a consumer card. Nvidia’s is a brute-force approach: With 7.1 billion transistors (an Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition CPU has only 2.3 billion), the GPU on the GTX Titan is a very large chip that achieves its performance by packing in an incredible 2,688 CUDA graphics-processing cores, compared to the 1,536 cores on the GeForce GTX 680 or the 960 on the consumer-priced GeForce GTX 660.
One thing the Titan does do for certain, though, is return the title of “fastest single-GPU graphics card” to Nvidia, a medal that AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 had previously stolen. Bragging rights have a lot do with why Nvidia built this card—and why some gamers will want to buy it. So here's the skinny on the Titan.
Specs, Architecture & Features
The GeForce GTX Titan is powered by Nvidia’s GK110 GPU, an evolution of the chip design used by the 18,688 Tesla GPU-computing cards that make up its namesake, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Titan, which is the world’s fastest supercomputer. This enormous 28nm-process chip features 14 SMX units and 2,688 CUDA cores, compared to eight and 1,536, respectively, on the GeForce GTX 680. Along with additional processing power, the GTX Titan gets a performance boost by widening its memory path, giving it 50 percent more memory bandwidth to access graphics data. The chip features a 384-bit memory path (compared to 256-bit on the GTX 680) and a whopping 6GB of DDR5 RAM running at an effective 6GHz memory clock.
The stock GTX Titan runs at a clock speed of 836MHz, with a boost speed of 876MHz. Also, Nvidia has revamped GPU Boost, its automatic overlocking feature, to focus on GPU heat instead of power draw. The GPU Boost 2.0 feature employed by the Titan can potentially reach higher speeds than would have been possible with the previous boost feature. (Earlier cards' boost speeds would sometimes top out, even though the temperature environment still indicated some safe performance headroom; using thermal headroom as the metering factor here is more efficient.) More adventurous users can boost voltages and manually overclock the card to get even higher clock speeds. Models will be available with water-cooling blocks, and users of liquid-cooled systems will find that the temperature-based clock limits will allow them to push their GPUs even harder.
A view of the GTX Titan without its cooling hardware mounted, highlighting the SLI connector at top left and the GK110 GPU. Note the dual PSU connectors at top right.
Another feature of GPU Boost 2.0 is support for display overclocking, previously a relatively obscure branch of performance tweaking. Most mainstream LCD monitors refresh at a rate of 60Hz, which means that no matter how fast your video card can process frames internally, the monitor can only draw them 60 times a second. With GPU Boost 2.0, you can attempt to increase the refresh rate of your display manually to get a faster frame rate. Keep in mind, though, that some monitors won’t support any boost at all, while some 60Hz models may easily go up to 80GHz.
The GTX Titan is the first consumer card with significant support for GPU-accelerated 64-bit floating-point math, offering nearly 1.5 teraflops of performance for scientists, students, and others creating custom applications that can benefit from high-precision math. This isn’t a feature most gamers will notice, or even enable. Actually, activating the CUDA-Double Precision setting causes the GTX Titan card to run at a reduced clock speed.
Things get more interesting when you start considering these cards in pairs and trios. The GTX Titan supports Nvidia’s SLI multiple-card architecture, allowing you to install two or three GTX Titan cards in a single system with an SLI-supporting motherboard and enough PCI Express slots. According to Nvidia, three Titan cards in triple-SLI will outperform a pair of dual-GPU GTX 690 cards running in quad-SLI configuration, but at a hefty cost: $3,000 worth of video cards alone. (We've got a sampling of multiple-Titan-card performance specifics in the Performance section of this story.)
The backplane of the Titan reference board: two dual-link DVI, one HDMI, and one DisplayPort.
Note also that you’ll need a beefy power supply to run this card, with Nvidia recommending a minimum 600-watt power supply. You'll also have to pay attention to the available power connectors on the supply: The card requires both six-pin and eight-pin power connectors. The card has a Thermal Design Power (TDP) rating of 250 watts, so you’re looking at a 1,200-watt-minimum power supply if you're looking to run a triple-SLI setup. Of course, the cost of that new power supply will be the least of your expenses in such a PC build.
Ports & Features
Along with speed, another key goal in designing the GeForce GTX Titan was to create a cool, quiet card that could fit in small, high-performance PCs. (In the Nvidia Titan demo Computer Shopper attended, the card was demonstrated cranking away inside a Falcon Northwest Tiki system.) Its vapor-chamber cooler and single fan are designed to exhaust heat through the back of the computer. (The air is routed straight through the card and out the grille on the card's PCI-slot backplane.) That allows for much quieter, cooler operation than the GeForce GTX 690. You can adjust the card’s fan controller to prioritize acoustics or speed, allowing you to crank up the normally whisper-quiet fan if you’re trying to achieve maximum performance.
You'll also see some size "savings" with this card versus a GTX 690. Though the Titan is a big card (as you'd expect from the name!), at 10.5 inches it’s an inch shorter than the GTX 690. And it looks super: Nvidia's card partners may modify the cooler in their final retail versions of the Titan, but the company's reference design features a slick aluminum shell with a polycarbonate window that lets you view the vapor chamber and heat sink. It’s a classy design that befits the card’s luxury price.
Likewise, the port selection on the Nvidia reference design is well-chosen for what the typical buyer of this kind of card would expect. The reference card features a pair of dual-link DVI connectors, an HDMI port, and a DisplayPort connector. (The port selection may vary on some manufacturers’ cards, however.) Using these ports, you can drive up to four monitors simultaneously.
As you’d expect, the GTX Titan supports all of the features Nvidia has touted on lower-end GTX 600-series cards, including 3D Surround video, CUDA GPU-accelerated computation, PhysX physics technology, and TXAA temporal antialiasing. The card will also support mirroring its display on Nvidia’s upcoming Project Shield handheld gaming device.
Performance Testing
When comparing the GTX Titan’s performance to other high-end single-GPU graphics cards, tests run by our sister Web site PCMag.com show that it definitely earns its premium price relative to the competition.
Testing started with the 3DMark 11 synthetic benchmark at its Extreme setting. This test exercises a wide variety of the card’s DirectX 11 features. Here, the GTX Titan was dramatically faster than the AMD Radeon HD 7970 and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 680.
The card also easily bested both the Radeon HD 7970 and the GTX 680 in the new-for-2013 3DMark benchmark test (dubbed "3DMark FireStrike" for differentiation)...
Moving from synthetic benchmarks to real-world game tests, we saw clear performance boosts over earlier single-GPU cards, though in some cases they weren’t as significant as the results of our synthetic tests.
Metro 2033 is an extremely demanding game, particularly at the settings we tested at: maximum detail at 1080p resolution with both 4x antialiasing and 16x anisotropic filtering enabled. Here, the GTX Titan was almost 50 percent faster than the GTX 680, and the difference was still notable compared to the Radeon HD 7970...
On the Shogun 2: Total War test at maximum detail, 1080p resolution, and 8x MSAA, the GTX Titan again showed a marked speed increase over the "lower-end" cards. The performance increase means the game should be silky-smooth even at 2,560x1,440 resolution on a 27-inch monitor with every detail maxed out.
Finally, the Batman: Arkham City tests showed a notable increase over earlier cards. But all were so fast that the speed increase afforded by the GTX Titan would be most noticeable only when cranked up to even higher resolutions, when running in 3D, or if using multiple monitors.
Overall, the GTX Titan easily wrests the “fastest single-GPU card” crown back from AMD’s Radeon HD 7970. With rare exceptions, like Metro 2033, you’ll be hard-pressed to find many games that will push its performance to the limit, particularly in multi-card SLI setups, on a single monitor.
That was borne out in SLI testing. At the same time that it tested the GTX Titan, sister site PCMag.com also received a couple of desktop PCs equipped with two and three GTX Titan cards for testing in parallel. The Maingear F131 Super Stock, equipped with a pair of GTX Titan cards in SLI mode, scored a whopping 182 frames per second (fps) in our Aliens vs. Predator benchmark at maximum quality, with 4x AA and 4X AF enabled. Meanwhile, the other system, a Falcon Northwest Mach V configuration with a trio of GTX Titan cards, was even faster, clocking in at 222fps. Both of those results are dramatically faster than typical monitors can handle. SLI configurations of this card don’t really start to make a lot of sense until you start adding multiple monitors and/or 3D to the mix.
Conclusion
In the end, owning a GeForce GTX Titan is a bit like driving a Bugatti Veyron or Ferrari F40 on your daily commute. It provides the potential for extreme speed, but most of the time, you have to keep it pent up, with the world affording precious few chances to take advantage of it all. But, admittedly, it looks great (indeed, it's the slickest-looking graphics card we've ever seen, for those of you with windowed PC cases), and it gives you platinum-plated bragging rights over the other gamers on the road.
That said, if you’re just looking for the fastest single card that $1,000 can buy you, and PC-chassis space and power consumption are nonfactors, Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 690 remains the alpha-dog video card, with performance that’s a mite faster on games that can take advantage of its dual GPUs. But if you’re willing to drop thousands of dollars on a premium triple-SLI setup, or you want to build or buy a small, quiet single-card system, the GeForce GTX Titan steps into the lead.
In the end, the GTX Titan is as much about bragging rights as anything, for both gamers and Nvidia alike. Nvidia will only make a limited number of these cards, but the Titan lets the company reclaim the right to boast that it has the fastest consumer graphics cards available. Gamers will need to crank settings up to insane levels, pushing most games to the limit, to make a single GTX Titan break a silicon sweat on one monitor. You’ll likely need to delve into triple-monitor gaming to really justify the expense of a triple-SLI setup. But whether or not many current games can really take full advantage of its performance, the GTX Titan is the card, apart from the GTX 690, that will be able to make digital mincemeat of upcoming games for the longest time.
By Bayu Adi Prakoso NIM 125150207111084
TITLE : New Advanced Technology of Graphic Card : Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan
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