Review: NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN

Final Thoughts And Rating

We come to the end of the GeForce GTX TITAN's performance evaluation with mixed feelings. This is the card that the GeForce GTX 680 should have been, a dominant successor to the GTX 580, not the incumbent mid-range GPU that currently masquerades atop of the GeForce 6-series line. TITAN is undeniably fast, beautifully engineered, quiet and very much the poster boy for the Kepler architecture.

Beating up on present GeForce GTX 680 to the tune of 40 per cent is no mean feat, but AMD's combination of recent driver improvements and faster clocks for the HD 7970 GHz Edition enable it to challenge TITAN in certain titles, so while single-GPU victory is, on balance, assured for NVIDIA's finest gaming silicon, it's not quite the performance landslide many had predicted.

And then our thoughts turn to the £830 price for a single card. This is verging on the ridiculous , frankly, and had NVIDIA really cared about providing a semblance of value, TITAN would have launched at, say, £549. This thousand-buck card's wonderfully meaty architecture isn't nearly enough to manhandle dual-GPU cards such as the GeForce GTX 690 or, taken to an extreme, the Radeon HD 7990.

But here's the skinny; NVIDIA knows that those who purchase GeForces - company loyalty counts for a lot - will go for the dual-GPU GTX 690 if absolute gaming speed be the primary concern. Others, who want a more-refined card that is invulnerable to the potential pitfalls of multi-GPU rendering, may well take TITAN on. It can be thought of as a win-win situation for the green team, because those who genuinely want the best-in-class products often have the means to pay for them.

We still see TITAN being worthy of consideration in two possible scenarios. Those folk contemplating and financing a 'Dream PC' build cannot do better than lasso a trio of these cards together in three-way SLI. Three TITANs represent the very cutting-edge of consumer graphics performance. Sure, you'll drop £2,500 on the cards alone, but there's nothing better on the horizon. And playing on the TITAN's energy-efficiency and quietness strengths, we can envisage it being shoehorned into small, quiet systems that are capable of explosive performance. The remaining bulk of the ultra-enthusiast gaming market that isn't bookended by these extremes will be better served with faster, cheaper alternatives.

Bottom line: The fastest-ever single-GPU card is the GeForce GTX TITAN, but do understand that its price is even more preposterous than its speed. But hey, the TITAN's prowess makes the just-announced Sony PS4 seem like a graphical relic. Pricing aside, we really want one for our home systems.

The Good

Super-quiet at all times
Fastest single-GPU card in the world
Wonderfully built; looks the business
Primed for three-way performance dominance
Provides gobs of power for small-form-factor systems

The Bad

Price. £830, really, NVIDIA
Not as fast as incumbent (price-comparable) dual-GPU solutions

HEXUS Rating

NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN 6GB

HEXUS Awards

NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN 6GB

HEXUS Where2Buy

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN 6GB is currently on pre-order from Scan.co.uk* and eBuyer.co.uk.

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

*UK-based HEXUS community members are eligible for free delivery and priority customer service through the SCAN.care@HEXUS forum.