Conclusion
Conclusion
Okay, lets face it, you will be hard pressed to find a gaming title that will worry the GTX Titan X the slightest bit. Let alone use the ginormous amount of graphics memory. On memory, history has shown two things though:
- Enthusiast level gaming requires a lot of VRAM.
- People simply like gigantic VRAM buffers.
Do you really need a card as beefy as the X really is though? Well no, not really if you are playing games in the 1080P domain. However more is better and with technologies like DSR (super-sampling) and Ultra HD the raw horsepower this card offers certainly isn't distasteful. Obviously value wise you are way better off with a GeForce GTX 970 or 980, with only 3.5 / 4 GB of graphics memory, see what I did there ;) But crap man, the Titan X certainly is cool, very cool. And the sheer horsepower versus that massive VRAM partition is going to attract a certain kind of people, and yeah that would be part of the Guru3D.com reader-base. Honestly I can talk and explain why you should or shouldn't purchase a card like this, the fact remains people that can afford it will purchase it, people that can't or refuse to, won't. It's all as simple as that. I mean this is the Ferrari that nobody can afford, but really likes. But hey, who knows with pending titles like GTA5 and technologies like Ultra HD and / or DSR versus performance and VRAM what you find valid, or not. High up there in the enthusiast space there certainly is a market for cards like these. That makes these Titan models relevant for gaming. Oh and it really is a partition of 12 GB and not 11.5 GB of graphics memory :P Allow me to make this last pun about it.
Aesthetics
For the Titan X series Nvidia tweaked the aesthetics of the cooler a bit. Being a very expensive card they made it more mysterious looking with that black shell, lovely to see is the new LED lighting design. The GeForce GTX logo on top some might dislike, it surely doesn't bother me though and that see-through Plexiglass in the cooler makes it look quite nice. So I think everybody will agree with me, it's just a great looking and sturdy product. Some will dislike the fact that it does not have a backplate though. I remain skeptical about backplates though, they can trap heat and thus warm up the PCB. But the flip-side is that they do look better and can protect your PCB and components from damage.
Cooling & Noise Levels
The cooling itself really is at the same level it was, you can't really complain about it. A bit trivial of course remain the temperature targets that Nvidia is using. The default setting for the Titan X will be 80 degrees C, meaning the card is allowed to run at 80 Degrees C before ramping up the fan RPM 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. Most of you would however prefer something a little lower. You can obviously change the temperature target of the fan RPM yourself, that will ramp up the noise levels though. But at roughly 80 degrees C and at that level the noise levels are okay really. In idle you can barely hear the cooling solution and under stress, well you can hear some airflow and that's it. The downside of a higher temperature allowance does effect the heating of the PCB, as you can see there is a lot of heat bleeding throughout the PCB. Including the VRM area, it however remains in the 80~85 degrees C range throughout the board, and that remains acceptable.
Power Consumption
The GM200 Maxwell GPU is rated as having a 250 Watt TDP, our measurements back that up, bear in mind that this is a peak maximum value under full stress. At this performance level you are looking at a card that consumes roughly 450 Watts for the PC in total, that is okay. We think a ~650 Watts PSU would be sufficient and, if you go with 2-way SLI, an 800~900 Watts 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.
Game Performance
From 1080P to Ultra HD the GeForce GTX Titan X hauls the proverbial toosh. Obviously it is the fasted kid on the block. This much performance and graphics memory helps you in Ultra HD, hefty complex anti-aliasing modes, DSR and of course the latest gaming titles. I consider this to be the first 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. And with a single GPU there's no micro-stuttering and no multi-GPU driver issues to fight off. Performance wise, really there's not one game that won't run seriously good at the very best image quality settings. Gaming you must do with a nice 30" monitor of course, at 2560x1440/1600 or Ultra HD. Now, we can discuss the advantages of a 12 GB framebuffer, but hey... you can draw your own conclusions there. At least you won't run out of graphics memory for the years to come right? So in that respect the card is rather future proof.
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 1200 MHz base clock, add to that the dynamic boost clock and you'll see your games rendeing in the 1350 to 1400 MHz domain. The memory you'll be able to get close to roughly 8 GHz effective. That memory runs hot though, hotter than your GPU even. So don't push it too far, and we certainly do not recommend adding voltage to that memory.
Concluding
Alright alright, it is time to wrap things up. While reviewing the GeForce GTX Titan X I had this song in my mind. Before reading this conclusion, browse downward, turn up the volume and then begin reading my final words.
The GeForce GTX Titan X is VERY impressive. But it is a niche product due to its very high pricing level. Depending on street prices you can expect a 1000 USD/EURO pricetag. Huge performance with a huge die-size GPU and you'll get more graphics memory usable for the years to come. In that respect the X is a rather future proof product. But obviously that alone does not justify a price tag at this level. Price / performance wise a 3.5 GB GeForce GTX 970 or 4 GB GeForce GTX 980 would make more sense, but IF you need that extra memory and a third additional performance on top of that while staying in a single GPU configuration then the card is an obvious winner alright. If you game at 2560x1440 (WQHD) then it's barely relevant to go 12 GB. That said, it's darn fast in performance. Very fluid framerates is what you'll play your games with. It does so while hardly making any noise and keeps the product at OK temperatures. A GeForce GTX Titan X with 12 GB in return will offer you fluid framerates while gaming with the newest game titles and you get plenty of reserve for titles that like heavy usage of graphics memory. But as recent history has shown, a 4 GB card (with actual 4 GB VRAM working at full speed) is more than sufficient in the year 2015. Now, "X" is a good notch faster compared to the reference GeForce GTX 780 Ti and is a nice notch faster compared to the GeForce GTX 980, for what if offers that's not a bad performance position to be in alright. At 2560x1440 you can expect an increase of 30% performance over a reference GeForce GTX 980, at Ultra HD we have seen that number grow to 40% more performance depending on the title you play. What I find interesting to see is that with a GPU of this size and that many memory ICs there still remains to be room left for tweaking.
The Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X is great, grand really. But I am certain that most of you can't look away from the price-tag. Overall the product is just impressive and has great aesthetics with the all new dark looks. We do hope to see a card with that other small extension, GTX 980 Ti with 6 GB, eh? Price wise of course the X is too expensive in the regular consumer domain. But hey, this is the enthusiast game, it is the black painted Ferrari among the graphics cards and as niche and expensive as it gets. People love this stuff regardless of the fact they can't afford it. The X certainly did raise my heartbeat when I first had it in my hands. The X is top notch, we bow to it.
Now where is GTA-V for PC? Surely that game will eat away over 6 GB VRAM, right?
H.
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DMX --- X Gonna Give It To Ya. While you read the conclusion, start-up the video below -- and turn up the volume.
