Usurped momentarily by the AMD Radeon R9 290X as the fastest consumer GPU available in October 2013, Nvidia came back firing with the GeForce GTX 780 Ti a month later. Equipped with the full complement of shaders present in the underlying GK110 die and further boosted by frequency hikes on both core and memory, the Ti version is comfortably faster than the standard GeForce GTX 780 launched in May 2013.
GTX 780 Ti's muscular specifications also beat out the GeForce GTX Titan in the gaming stakes. $999 GTX Titan, effectively relegated to second-rung status, still makes some sense for developers who need access to 6GB of onboard memory and faster double-precision compute support - Titan runs double-precision at 1/3rd of single-precision, compared with 1/24th for GTX 780 Ti.
Yet, by its very name, one would think Titan should be the very best consumer graphics card from Nvidia's GTX stable. Today, along with launching the Maxwell-powered GeForce GTX 750 Ti, Nvidia is bringing order to the GTX line-up by reinstating Titan as the premier graphics card. This new card is known as Titan Black.
Specifications
| GPU | Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan Black 6GB |
Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan 6GB |
Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB |
Radeon R9 290X 4GB |
Radeon R9 290 4GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Launch date | February 2014 |
February 2013 |
November 2013 |
October 2013 |
November 2013 |
| DX API | 11.1 |
11.1 |
11.1 |
11.2 |
11.2 |
| Process (nm) | 28 |
28 |
28 |
28 |
28 |
| Transistors (mn) | 7,100 |
7,100 |
7,100 |
6,200 |
6,200 |
| Approx Die Size (mm²) | 551 |
551 |
551 |
438 |
438 |
| SMX Units | 15 |
14 |
15 |
NA |
NA |
| Processors | 2,880 |
2,688 |
2,880 |
2,816 |
2,560 |
| Texture Units | 240 |
224 |
240 |
176 |
160 |
| ROP Units | 48 |
48 |
48 |
64 |
64 |
| Peak GPU Clock/Boost (MHz) | 980 |
876 |
928 |
1,000 |
947 |
| Peak GFLOPS (SP) | 5,645 |
4,709 |
5,345 |
5,632 |
4,849 |
| Peak GFLOPS (DP) | 1,881 |
1,569 |
223 |
704 |
606 |
| Memory Clock (MHz) | 7,000 |
6,000 |
7,000 |
5,000 |
5,000 |
| Memory Bus (bits) | 384 |
384 |
384 |
512 |
512 |
| Max bandwidth (GB/s) | 336.5 |
288.4 |
336.5 |
320 |
320 |
| Power Connectors | 8+6-pin |
8+6-pin |
8+6-pin |
8+6-pin |
8+6-pin |
| TDP (watts) | 250 |
250 |
250 |
250 |
250 |
| GFLOPS per watt | 22.58 |
17.98 |
21.38 |
22.52 |
19.40 |
| Current price | $999 |
$999 (EOL) |
$699 |
$549 |
$399 |
Analysis
GeForce GTX Titan Black 6GB is a logical advancement that follows in the footsteps of GTX 780 Ti. Titan Black improves on its predecessor by also using the full GK 110 die, also known as B1, and one that calls for 2,880 shaders and 240 texture-units housed in 15 SMXs.
Imitating the GTX 780 Ti blueprint, memory speed is increased from 6GHz to an effective 7GHz, thus offering an additional 16.7 per cent bandwidth. Core frequency, too, sees a nice hike over first-generation Titan, now running at a peak 980MHz instead of 876MHz.
Crunching the numbers shows that Titan Black also enjoys a 20 per cent increase in GFLOPS throughput over regular Titan, with performance uplifts coming at the same 250W TDP.
Titan Black is sure to benchmark a touch higher than GTX 780 Ti, but this isn't really a gaming GPU at heart. The $999 price tag (£785) makes little sense from a value point of view - GTX 780 Ti is very nearly as good - so it's more a case of Nvidia offering extra performance to folk who would have ordinarily purchased a Titan for its larger framebuffer and enhanced DP support.
Nvidia says Titan Black is to be made available from select partners today. Expect them all to use the rather good reference heatsink, and the simplest method of discerning between first- and second-generation models is to look at the colouring of the Titan name - the Black's name is, well, in black. Simples!
