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Review: NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN in SLI

by Tarinder Sandhu on 27 February 2013, 09:30

Tags: NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qabs65

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Twin TITANs

You've seen what makes it tick, been privy to just how well one TITAN card performs against some ultra-enthusiast competition, but let's face it, leaving the best GeForce without at least seeing what it can do in a multi-card configuration is verging on criminal.

NVIDIA believes GeForce GTX TITAN really comes into its own when run in two- or three-way SLI, for thunderous performance that no other graphics subsystem can match. Sure, you'll need to pay up to £2,500 for the privilege of such graphical barbarism, but when has bleeding-edge performance ever been cheap?

We've put a couple of these muscular TITANs together - £1,600-plus retail pricing notwithstanding - and evaluated how they perform against the crème de la crème of the graphics world.

It's undeniable that a single TITAN is the fastest consumer GPU ever released, and recent two-board SLI performance has provided near-perfect scaling in some titles. Cobble these two facts together and, assuming the base system - CPU and memory - is up to the task of feeding a potential 9TFLOPS of power, performance should be electric.

Test setup

GPU Comparisons

Graphics Card GPU Clock
(MHz)
Stream
Processors
Shader Clock
(MHz)
Memory Clock
(MHz)
Memory Bus
(bits)
Graphics Driver Approx Price
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN 6GB SLI 837 (876) 2,688 x 2 837 (876) 6,008 384 x2 GeForce 314.09 £1,660
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN 6GB 837 (876) 2,688 837 (876) 6,008 384 GeForce 314.09 £830
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 4GB 915 (1,019) 3,072 915 (1,019) 6,008 256 x 2 GeForce 314.07 WHQL £750
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2GB 1,006 (1,058) 1,536 1,006 (1,058) 6,008 256 GeForce 314.07 WHQL £375
AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz 3GB 1,000 (1,050) 2,048 1,000 (1,050) 6,000 384 Catalyst 13.2 beta 6 £350
Club3D Radeon HD 7990 6GB 900 2,048 x 2 900 5,500 384 x 2 Catalyst 13.2 beta 6 £730
AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB CrossFire 925 2,048 x 2 925 5,500 384 x 2 Catalyst 13.2 beta 6 £600

HEXUS High-End Test Bench

Processor Intel Core i7-3770K (3.50GHz, 8MB cache, quad-core)
CPU Cooler Intel reference E97378-001
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP4 TH
Memory 8GB G.Skill RipJaws (2x4GB) DDR3 @ 1,600MHz
Power Supply Corsair AX750W
Storage Device Samsung 830 Series 256GB SSD
Optical Drive Generic 24x DVD-RW
Chassis Corsair Graphite Series 600T
Monitor Dell 3007FPW and 3x BenQ EW2430
Operating system Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit, SP1)

HEXUS Super-High-End Benchmarking Suite

3D Benchmarks Mode and Resolutions Quality Settings
3DMark DX11 at 1,920x1,080 and 2,560x1,440 Fire Strike Standard and Extreme
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 DX9 at 2,560x1,600 and 5,760x1,080 4xMSAA, Very High/Extra Preset
Crysis 3 DX11 at 2,560x1,600 and 5,760x1,080 4xMSAA, High Preset
DiRT Showdown DX11 at 2,560x1,600 and 5,760x1,080 4xMSAA, Ultra Preset
Far Cry 3 DX11 at 2,560x1,600 and 5,760x1,080 2xMSAA, Ultra Preset
Just Cause 2 DX10 at 2,560x1,600 and 5,760x1,080 8xMSAA, Very High Preset
Sleeping Dogs DX11 at 2,560x1,600 and 5,780x1,080 4xMSAA, High Preset
General Benchmarks Description
Power Consumption To emulate real-world usage scenarios, we record mains power draw both when idle and while playing Far Cry 3
Temperature To emulate real-world usage scenarios, we record GPU core temperature both when idle and while playing Far Cry 3
Noise A PCE-318 meter is used to record noise levels when idle and while playing Far Cry 3

There's little doubt that the TITAN SLI duo should win most, if not all, of the benchmarks. Let's see how fast it is, especially in the just-released Crysis 3.