Conclusion

Conclusion

Blimey, it's hard to not lose focus and make puns all the time with a Star Wars edition graphics card and a G ... Force ... Granted, I like what Nvidia has done here. They've gone outside the scope of the regular and did something truly funny and appealing. That said, the Star Wars Edition Titan Xp obviously is for the true fans from Nvidia as well as the Star Wars movies. Luckily that's a very small demographic .. Yeaaaahhhh right :)

Now I grew up with Star Wars, they are the childhood movies I watched, hence that adds a certain flair and sentiment when testing a card like shown today. Therefore I tried to be as objective as one can be. Granted the SW Collectors edition is a plan well executed, as this card looks terrific, and yes it remains to be the fastest card on the planet. Having said that, I would probably have liked to see a Collectors edition card in a cheaper class of graphics cards?  Surely a lot of people totally love this card but moreover, the idea of collector edition cards. But an Xp at 1200 USD, it is just way out of reach for most people. Then again, from the green side, I understand it as well, as when you get the opportunity to do something this special with a card, you do it on your fastest consumer product, period. 

 Aesthetics

Nvidia took the reference design of the Titan Xp, uses the same PCB, same board and same GPU. However, the icing on top of the Jedi cake is, of course, the cooler. Really, this release is all about the nostalgic Star Wars feel presented onto the cooler. The cooler is pretty much the reference cooler, but with a revamped shell. The rugged/used looks of the what is supposed to be a lightsaber combined with the subtle LED effects are just too gorgeous, I mean if you allow me to go subjective for a second here, I just really love the looks ;-) What Nvidia did rather clever is to offer two SKUs, each with their own style and LED system. So if you do want to go to the dark side, the looks will match with red LEDs as well. So yes you can opt the "Empire" edition, or what we have been showing you today, the "Jedi" edition card. 

Cooling & Noise Levels

The cooling itself really is at the same level it was, you can't really complain about it but it's just not impressive either, noisy even. A bit trivial of course remain the temperature targets that Nvidia is using. The default setting for the Titan Xp will be 80 degrees C, meaning the card is allowed to run at roughly 80 Degrees C before ramping up the fan RPM or clocking down to try to keep the product cool at 80 Degrees C. Nvidia feels this is a nice balance in-between performance, power consumption, and temperatures. However, you did measure 43 DBa, which definitely can be heard. In idle you can barely hear the cooling solution (fan does not turn off though) and under stress, well, you can hear airflow. The downside of a higher temperature allowance does affect the heating of the PCB, as you can see there is a bit of heat bleeding throughout the PCB including a warm VRM area, the temps measured however throughout the board measurements, remain to be very acceptable. The one thing that does bother me is that under full game load the temps will reach the maximum temp target of 83 Degrees C, and after that, the card could start throttling. Now, that throttling minimal as we have shown you in the temperature measurements, it just over the 1.7 GHz boost frequency.

Power Consumption

The GP102 Pascal GPU is rated as having a 250 Watt TDP, our measurements back that up, keep in mind that this is a peak maximum value under full stress. At this performance level, you are looking at 400~500 Watts for the PC in total, that is okay. We think a 650 Watt PSU would be sufficient and, if you go with 2-way SLI, an 800~900 Watt power supply is recommended. Remember, when purchasing a PSU aim to double up in Wattage as your PSU is most efficient when it is under 50% load. Here again, keep in mind we measure peak power consumption, the average power consumption is a good notch lower depending on GPU utilization. Also, if you plan to overclock the CPU/memory and/or GPU with added voltage, please do purchase a power supply with enough reserve. People often underestimate it, but if you tweak all three aforementioned variables, you can easily add 200 Watts to your peak power consumption budget.

Gaming Performance

From 1080P to Ultra HD the card shows some serious numbers. But here's a paradox - the more difficult things get - the better the product will perform. E.g. Ultra HD is its true domain. This much performance and 12 GB of GDDR5X graphics memory will help you out in Ultra HD, DSR, VR and hefty complex anti-aliasing modes. That, and of course the latest gaming titles. I consider this to be a very viable single GPU solution that allows you to game properly in Ultra HD with some very nice eye candy enabled with a single GPU. Drivers wise we can't complain at all, we did not stumble into any issues. Performance wise, really there's not one game that won't run seriously well at the very best image quality settings. Gaming you must do with a nice Ultra HD monitor of course or at least a 2560x1440 screen. Now, we can discuss the advantages of that 12 GB frame-buffer, but hey, you can draw your own conclusions there as performance isn't limited. And with 12 GB of it, you won't run out of graphics memory for years to come, right? So in that respect, the card is more future proof. Well, at least until Volta is here.

Overclocking

The boost modes can be configured with temperature targets relative to maximum power draw and your GPU Core frequency offsets. Saying that I realize it sounds complicated, but you'll have your things balanced out quite fast as these products are easy to tweak. This GPU can take a proper boost clock, once tweaked (start with +100 MHz on the GPU and a 120% power limiter) and you'll see your games rendering in the 1900 MHz domain. The memory you'll be able to get close to roughly 12 GHz effective. For a GPU with 12 Billion transistors on a blower style cooler, you've gotta be at least a tiny bit impressed.

Concluding

Seriously you guys, I'm not going to do the traditional objective and technically supported conclusion here, this product is just not about that, at all. It is about nostalgia, feel and something original. Nvidia took their fastest consumer product and wanted to do something truly fun. They licensed the Star Wars design and logos and outs what you have seen today. So yeah, no shaders talk, clocks, and tweaks here as for this product, just this once, I will look at in a subjective manner. And being subjective, I just love it, there I said it. I really hope that Nvidia was able to spark and ignite something new here. I'd, however, hope to see more collectors edition in a lower stack product range, that can reach more people, as granted, that 1200 bucks are a whole lotta buckaroonies. So nothing about this purchase would be sensible, contrary an AIB TWeaked 1080 Ti would outperform this card, would be more silent and would run at better temperatures. But at the time of writing the Titan Xp is in the uber GPU to get, certainly not cheap but hey, it is priced similar to the reference (FE) Titan Xp, so the Star Wars fans do not pay any extra for these puppies. And I assume the Star Wars licensing wasn't a cheap one. The cards are all about design, looks and feel, and they are all that with a stunningly designed lightsaber style graphics card.

Now here are some ideas for Nvidia:

• Back to the Future, GeForce Volta Flux Capacitor edition
• Pulp Fiction, GeForce 2080 Royal with Cheese model.
• Blade Runner, ehm well something replicant.
• Ghostbusters, GeForce Volta Proton Pack Edition.
• Alien, GeForce Volta Endoparasitoid Extraterrestrial Species edition

Alright, enough puns. The Nvidia Titan Xp Collector's Edition is available as we speak, in the two aforementioned versions. We tested the Jedi Order card but surely the Dark Side ones are served just as well with the Galactic Empire card. I know a lot of you will love these cards, others simply not at all and I guess there's nothing in the middle as far as that goes. Let's face it if you are a fan and can spend the cash, heck this would be a top pick. But realistically, it's simply a Titan Xp with a difference shroud and LEDs, that galaxy reality I cannot shy far far away from. May the GeForce be with you and your purchasing decisions.

 - Guru Wan Kenobi

Recommended  Downloads

• Sign up to receive a notice when we publish a new article
• Or go back to Guru3D's front page