GeForce GTX Titan Black Edition Listed for Order

[warezme]

]Maxwell is going to be like Intel's Haswell don't get to excited till amd just flat out surpasses Nvidia and Intel there is no longer a reason to be excited about the next platform. A GeForce GTX 480 and a Intel Core i5-2500 can still max almost any game those are 3-4 year old parts that is freaking crazy also think of the fact that next gen consoles are=to those parts damn near.

I wouldn't down vote you on that but I think a more common setup like what I'm currently running would be a more valid argument. I'm still pushing a X58SLI board with a 590GTX and an i7 that has been OC'ed and running at 3.6Gz since Jesus walked on water. Even with this not so modern hardware I can still play my Skyrim on 3 screens at 5760x1080 maxed out with all my special mods.

 

[Mousemonkey]

... But 3GB vs 6GB - you'll never take advantage of that extra RAM unless you're running ridiculous resolutions.

And some games have issues using a lot of RAM aswell (I've read Skyrim used to be one such
title, but maybe they've patched the issue by now).

However, for those looking towards 2560 or 4K gaming, and/or multiple displays, 6GB cards make a lot
of sense. On the OCN Skyrim pics thread I noticed one poster had a 3970X with four Titans for his setup.
Alas, at 4K, the raw GPU power of the current top-end cards isn't sufficent for one GPU to drive a display
as high as 4K that well for most of the latest games - it needs at least two in SLI/CF for smooth motion.
Others will probably wait until monitors are available that can do 4K without tiling, and GPUs have advanced
to the point where one card can handle current games of the day at that res with decent detail

Ian.

I bought an msi lightning 7970 when it first launched and it still plays everything on ultra. I was almost worried with BF4 but on ultra im pushing 60-70 fps with dips as low as 50. Perfectly playable. Why would I want to shell out that kind of money or twice that? Ill wait until I cannot play on ultra anymore. Thx but no thx Nvidia.

I've been trying to figure out a way to force some games to take better advantage of my 4GB 770's VRAM. I know some games will allow this via the config file, but I cannot figure it out on BF4 for the life of me.

Also, the 4K idea makes sense; we'll chalk it up to Nvidia forward-thinking.

ABT have an article that you may be interested in.

http://alienbabeltech.com/abt/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31626

 

[mapesdhs]

I suppose without people buying the latest & greatest, pushing what's possible,
the next stages would never happen. Certainly if I had the money & the time, I'd
be exploring away in Skyrim on a 4K tri-780Ti/Titan setup for sure. Some people
blow their spare entertainment cash on fancy cars, others on dining out; for a
certain group of people though, it's high-end gaming, with all that entails -
water cooling, modded rigs, mega displays, custom control interfaces, etc. More
power to them I say.

krobjack, your comment obviously makes sense from your point of view,
but it's not as if a launch of this kind has been aimed personally at you. ;D
Just because one person decides they have no use for a particular new
product, that can't be used as a rationale for saying the product is somehow
pointless in general. Btw, what do you get for 3DMark11/13 (Performance & Extreme)
for your 7970 setup? Post some URLs! I'm intrigued. My two 580s are pushing the
limits of what's viable with Crysis (having shoved everything to the max re draw
distances, I've discovered using 4K shadow maps is a step too far, has to be 2K max).

Ian.

 

[Christopher Shaffer]

... But 3GB vs 6GB - you'll never take advantage of that extra RAM unless you're running ridiculous resolutions.

And some games have issues using a lot of RAM aswell (I've read Skyrim used to be one such
title, but maybe they've patched the issue by now).

However, for those looking towards 2560 or 4K gaming, and/or multiple displays, 6GB cards make a lot
of sense. On the OCN Skyrim pics thread I noticed one poster had a 3970X with four Titans for his setup.
Alas, at 4K, the raw GPU power of the current top-end cards isn't sufficent for one GPU to drive a display
as high as 4K that well for most of the latest games - it needs at least two in SLI/CF for smooth motion.
Others will probably wait until monitors are available that can do 4K without tiling, and GPUs have advanced
to the point where one card can handle current games of the day at that res with decent detail

Ian.

I bought an msi lightning 7970 when it first launched and it still plays everything on ultra. I was almost worried with BF4 but on ultra im pushing 60-70 fps with dips as low as 50. Perfectly playable. Why would I want to shell out that kind of money or twice that? Ill wait until I cannot play on ultra anymore. Thx but no thx Nvidia.

I've been trying to figure out a way to force some games to take better advantage of my 4GB 770's VRAM. I know some games will allow this via the config file, but I cannot figure it out on BF4 for the life of me.

Also, the 4K idea makes sense; we'll chalk it up to Nvidia forward-thinking.

ABT have an article that you may be interested in.

http://alienbabeltech.com/abt/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31626

Yeah, I've seen similar review results, except while they're not wrong, they're not right, either. Some games actually do use more than 2GB, or I should say use enough that more than 2GB of VRAM is needed/optimal.

Based on my tests and recording gameplay using Afterburner, the average use on my cards is 2.6GB, but has been as high as 3.6GB.

This means that things like textures on screen, currently active effects, etc. that don't actually get addressed in ANY review are pushing up the usage at times.

I've seen 100 benchmarks claiming that a 770 2GB gets 70FPS on average on BF4 Ultra @1080p with 2x MSAA. However, I was able to hit 100 on average, and 120FPS most of the time.

With two, I can use the same settings and hit 180 easy, probably averaging 160, but capping @ 148 (I have a 144Hz monitor that for some reason V-sync things is 148; I don't use V-sync, so I cap at 148 and no tearing).

The VRAM definitely makes a difference, under the right conditions. The other factor that is never considered is that games (like Skyrim) can actually use MORE VRAM if they are TOLD to, but most are configured assuming the card is 1GB or 2GB. Some games (again, like Skyrim) can be modded or tweaked to use more with better performance results.

When you're playing an FPS, on-screen load times in real-time animation makes a HUGE difference and VRAM can affect just this.

That said, the price difference at time of purchase between a 2GB and 4GB version of my cards was about $35, so it was more than worth it for the future-proofing.

 

[Mario852]

"as well as the double floating point precision GPU performance"This made me laugh so hard. The ambiguity of this and the double meaning of double. lol, well done.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

... But 3GB vs 6GB - you'll never take advantage of that extra RAM unless you're running ridiculous resolutions.

And some games have issues using a lot of RAM aswell (I've read Skyrim used to be one suchtitle, but maybe they've patched the issue by now).However, for those looking towards 2560 or 4K gaming, and/or multiple displays, 6GB cards make a lotof sense. On the OCN Skyrim pics thread I noticed one poster had a 3970X with four Titans for his setup.Alas, at 4K, the raw GPU power of the current top-end cards isn't sufficent for one GPU to drive a displayas high as 4K that well for most of the latest games - it needs at least two in SLI/CF for smooth motion.Others will probably wait until monitors are available that can do 4K without tiling, and GPUs have advancedto the point where one card can handle current games of the day at that res with decent detailIan.

I can confirm that skyrim still uses a ton. playing with everything maxed out, with the HD texture pack, with 2xmsaa pushes 1948MB of video mem usage (according to precision x). and that is at 1080p, with no graphic mods. pushing this game at 1440p with a couple of mods and 8xmsaa, i can easily see this game using much more than the 3GB limit of the 780ti.

 

[mapesdhs]

... pushing this game at 1440p with a couple of mods and 8xmsaa, i can easily see this game using much more than the 3GB limit of the 780ti.

Indeed, there is much discussion of this in parts of the Skyrim 'best pics' thread on overclock.net.

Ian.

 

[Christopher Shaffer]

... But 3GB vs 6GB - you'll never take advantage of that extra RAM unless you're running ridiculous resolutions.

And some games have issues using a lot of RAM aswell (I've read Skyrim used to be one suchtitle, but maybe they've patched the issue by now).However, for those looking towards 2560 or 4K gaming, and/or multiple displays, 6GB cards make a lotof sense. On the OCN Skyrim pics thread I noticed one poster had a 3970X with four Titans for his setup.Alas, at 4K, the raw GPU power of the current top-end cards isn't sufficent for one GPU to drive a displayas high as 4K that well for most of the latest games - it needs at least two in SLI/CF for smooth motion.Others will probably wait until monitors are available that can do 4K without tiling, and GPUs have advancedto the point where one card can handle current games of the day at that res with decent detailIan.

I can confirm that skyrim still uses a ton. playing with everything maxed out, with the HD texture pack, with 2xmsaa pushes 1948MB of video mem usage (according to precision x). and that is at 1080p, with no graphic mods. pushing this game at 1440p with a couple of mods and 8xmsaa, i can easily see this game using much more than the 3GB limit of the 780ti.

Which HD texture pack do you use? I've been trying to find one that's a simple install but what I've found requires a bunch of screwing around with files that I don't care to waste time with. It's not the technical difficulty so much as it is my laziness.

*edit* btw - found this on Steam. There's an official free DLC for the textures, but for some reason it wasn't showing in my previous Steam searches.

 

[Nostalgia MadPspmad]

6GB sounds a lot but more specifications will tell if this is superior to the performance of other graphics cards.

 

[mapesdhs]

6GB is not huge when dealing with 4K resolutions, high-res mod packs for various
games, or multi-screen gaming with lots of detail. Or more relevant to the Titan's
target market, those doing CUDA who can benefit from its 1/3rd-cores 64bit fp mode.
Pro users on a budget are the real target market for the Titan. What NVIDIA hasn't
done is release a 780Ti with 6GB, which is a real shame as that's clearly what
gamers would much rather have.

We already know the performance, it will be akin to a 780Ti if the clocks are the
same, except where RAM issues are a factor such as the heavily-modded Skyrim
discussion above. So, unless you can remotely benefit from the 6GB for whatever
reason, you're better off with a 780Ti.

And btw, 6GB for a pro task is not a lot. SGI was doing systems with 160GB VRAM
and 16GB texture RAM more than a decade ago, and that was only a sw limit (before
they messed everything up, plans had been in place to scale their gfx to 2560GB
VRAM and 256GB TRAM, probably more if IR5 had come out).

Ian.