GeForce GTX Titan X Review: Can One GPU Handle 4K?

[ap3x]

Interesting move by nVidia to send a G-Sync monitor... So to trade off the lackluster performance over the GTX980, they wanted to cover it up with a "smooth experience", huh? hahaha.

I'm impressed by their shenanigans. They up themselves each time.

In any case, at least this card looks fine for compute.

Cheers!

Paying almost double for a 30% increase in performance??? Shenanigans alright xD

Your surprised? Early adopters always pay the premium. I find it interesting you mention "almost every benchmark" when comparing this GPU to a dual GPU of last generation. Sounds impressive on a purely performance measure. I am not a fan of SLI but I suspect two of these would trounce anything around.

Either way the card is way out of my market but now that another card has taken top honors, maybe it will bleed the 970/980 prices down a little into my cheapskate hands.

Single (and Crossfired) 295X2 vs 2 GTX Titans in SLI coming right up, read and weep:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-295x2-crossfire-performance,3808-4.html

Interesting move by nVidia to send a G-Sync monitor... So to trade off the lackluster performance over the GTX980, they wanted to cover it up with a "smooth experience", huh? hahaha.

I'm impressed by their shenanigans. They up themselves each time.

In any case, at least this card looks fine for compute.

Cheers!

Paying almost double for a 30% increase in performance??? Shenanigans alright xD

Your surprised? Early adopters always pay the premium. I find it interesting you mention "almost every benchmark" when comparing this GPU to a dual GPU of last generation. Sounds impressive on a purely performance measure. I am not a fan of SLI but I suspect two of these would trounce anything around.

Either way the card is way out of my market but now that another card has taken top honors, maybe it will bleed the 970/980 prices down a little into my cheapskate hands.

Single (and Crossfired) 295X2 vs 2 GTX Titans in SLI coming right up, read and weep:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-295x2-crossfire-performance,3808-4.html

Interesting move by nVidia to send a G-Sync monitor... So to trade off the lackluster performance over the GTX980, they wanted to cover it up with a "smooth experience", huh? hahaha.

I'm impressed by their shenanigans. They up themselves each time.

In any case, at least this card looks fine for compute.

Cheers!

Paying almost double for a 30% increase in performance??? Shenanigans alright xD

Your surprised? Early adopters always pay the premium. I find it interesting you mention "almost every benchmark" when comparing this GPU to a dual GPU of last generation. Sounds impressive on a purely performance measure. I am not a fan of SLI but I suspect two of these would trounce anything around.

Either way the card is way out of my market but now that another card has taken top honors, maybe it will bleed the 970/980 prices down a little into my cheapskate hands.

Single (and Crossfired) 295X2 vs 2 GTX Titans in SLI coming right up, read and weep:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-295x2-crossfire-performance,3808-4.html

Lol, I love how enthusiastic you are with your link that does not show the Titan X but rather the old Titan. The article clearly says May 2014 bro. Nice FAIL there man.

 

[Arabian Knight]

Now imagine two Titan X's on the same board.. Now were comparing apples to apples.

You know how expesisive those nVdia apples would be? Remember titan z?

Nvidia overpriced the Titan Z ... remember they lowered it $1200 later ?

was lowered from $3000 to $1800

Which proves how much Nvidia are Greedy.

http://www.techpowerup.com/204653/nvidia-cuts-geforce-gtx-titan-z-price-by-37-percent-but-for-oems-only.html

I am telling you the Titan X is not worth more than $700 ...

not factoring in intellectual pricing... the first keplar titan cost just over $100 to make. i would assume the new one is similar to that. so $700 is a far cry to what its worth. the rich who dont care about a measly $1000 will gladly pay the money to have it now rather than wait 2 months to pay $599 for the gimped version.

its sold out and selling pretty much no less than $250 over its msrp on ebay. its pricing is near perfect... actually nvidia could have sold out with a higher price tag. this is the way the world works, nvidia has money and the power, they can do as they like with near impunity as long as they make a profit.

Lets hope AMD beat them then !!! I hope their new cards are competitive enough.

by the way , for SLI machines $300 less is alot per card .. and for 60 fps in 4K you will need 2 of those cards.

Hope AMD does it this time ...

Besides , I dont understand how Nvidia thinks ... they can sell 10 times the quantity of the Titan X if they priced it lower.. and they will even profit more ..

IMO,

GTX 970 $300 4G
GTX 980 $500 , 6 or 8G version
Titan X $700 , 12G

this is how it should be ....

 

[loki1944]

Looking at Tweaktown and Hexus SLI performance for these is pretty meh so far; at 3840x2160 my 780TIs are:

-12 FPS faster in Bioshock Infinite than TitanX SLI (tweaktown settings)

-0.19 FPS faster in Shadow of Mordor than TitanX SLI (tweaktown settings which is medium preset no AA) .

-4 FPS slower than Titan X SLI in Tomb Raider (tweaktown settings)

-6.2 FPS slower than Titan X SLI in Shadow of Mordor (Hexus settings which is very high quality preset)

-12.3 FPS slower in Thief than Titan X SLI (tweaktown settings)

I'm sure when drivers get better it will give the Titan X a stronger lead, but to me it's just not really impressive at this point. GTX 980 SLI showing was even worse, I guess at least this card comes out on top at 4K out of the gate. Also not sure how useful for gaming that 12GB VRAM will be if that VRAM stacking actually works (I gotta see to believe), in the sense that if you have two cards giving you 6GB-16GB of VRAM will you really need 24. Looking at the performance it doesn't seem like it would really take much for AMD to broadside this thing with their next big card, but I guess we'll see. It would be nice to see a big leap in performance from either company rather than these rather incremental hops. I suppose they do make more money for less expenditure this way though.

 

[Arabian Knight]

<SNIPPED>

Lets hope AMD beat them then !!! I hope their new cards are competitive enough.

by the way , for SLI machines $300 less is alot per card .. and for 60 fps in 4K you will need 2 of those cards.

Hope AMD does it this time ...

Besides , I dont understand how Nvidia thinks ... they can sell 10 times the quantity of the Titan X if they priced it lower.. and they will even profit more ..

IMO,

GTX 970 $300 4G
GTX 980 $500 , 6 or 8G version
Titan X $700 , 12G

this is how it should be ....

You're right...if they didn't want to make money that is. There are no other cards with 12GB that cheap. There are no other cards with a 610mm^2 die size that cheap or even in existence for gpu. That is an expensive chip to make, and worse really expensive to WASTE when there are flaws. They couldn't sell it for $700 and make enough profit for it to be worth it probably. You do understand they have to make a profit right? You do understand they haven't made as much money as 2007 in 8yrs correct? TitanX should be $1200 as they are sold out and being hawked on ebay for more than that, meaning they foolishly left profits on the table they could have had for more R&D. There is no point in selling cheaper when you can't make them fast enough as it is. So $999 is a great price given what it does and how it's selling out. They apparently did you a $200+ favor at $999. BTW, their profits were down another 100mil this year vs. last year, so again they need to charge more or make less again. In 2013 they made ~550mil, but it's down 100mil for 2014. I hope they don't start acting more like AMD and pricing themselves to death. We see how that works out for the bottom line on AMD.

It's quite comic you're asking NV to be AMD and lose money too...LOL. Get a better job, so you won't think $1000 is a big deal, or just be happy knowing the people who pay $1000, make it so NV/AMD can afford to give us a really great card at $200-500 range.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/03/31/nvidias-futuristicsanta-clara-campus-is-back-on.html?ana=yahoo
The bad financials caused a halt on their expansion plans since 2013 also. They've had the property since 2009 and were supposed to be moving into the new building in 2015! Note they also hired 400+ more employees last year (probably ex-AMD people since they laid off 30% of their people over the last 4yrs, among others I guess). They've been rehabbing property just to house new hires to make up for the $300mil building they need to build. You need profits to expand and pay these people. So if you want R&D you should hope AMD & NV both figure a way to make a billion a year or more! When Intel's 266mil/year profits go away (assuming they don't sign up for more, which some say is true), they'll be making barely 200mil/yr...LOL. That is a QUARTER of what they made in 2007, and you want them to price down their cards? ROFL. So you would like the same cards rebadged for 5yrs then? They'd have to milk the same cow for a few more years every gen in order to do what you want. I prefer higher prices to accommodate new revs at least every 2-3 yrs. I might not be able to afford the top end (without wincing a bit), but I know that pays for my great $300-600 range products.

You seem to completely ignore how much they're making, and how much of it currently is INTEL paying them (266mil/year, that possibly goes away next year). Quit living in a fantasy land.

The 100 times the customers will earn them more . so making profit is still there ...

by the way , Had AMD been competitive , you would have seen Titan X selling at $700 .

 

[Eggz]

@Loki1944 & @somebodyspecial

I think Nvidia's implementing a good long-term strategy to position itself for larger performance leaps in coming years.

The fact of the matter is that the company stands to make enough money from efficiency improvements so that it must increase its market-share in the mobile space.

Nvidia does well in the high-end desktop space, but that's a MUCH smaller space than mobile. If they can get Apple to licence their graphics tech, or Samsung, for mobile phones, then they'll really grow in a significant way.

Landing contracts like that can really invigorate R&D spending across the board, including performance-based research and development.

 

[anthony8989]

Titan black was selling at +1000$ when r9290x was ~$500. It was still selling at $1000++ when the 295x2 dropped. You still don't understand what the Titan is. No other GPU will effect it's price , unless AmD starts licensing cuda, the Titan series is in a different league. Untouchable by non-nvidia cards.

Nvidias not making the most of revenue off of its desktop GPUs , sure. But does that mean they should sell their hardware at a loss? Or even less profit than possible ? That's a stupid business practice and if you think they should price the Titan lower out of the kindness of their hearts you need to reevaluate your understanding of business.

 

[somebodyspecial]

Titan black was selling at +1000$ when r9290x was ~$500. It was still selling at $1000++ when the 295x2 dropped. You still don't understand what the Titan is. No other GPU will effect it's price , unless AmD starts licensing cuda, the Titan series is in a different league. Untouchable by non-nvidia cards.

Nvidias not making the most of revenue off of its desktop GPUs , sure. But does that mean they should sell their hardware at a loss? Or even less profit than possible ? That's a stupid business practice and if you think they should price the Titan lower out of the kindness of their hearts you need to reevaluate your understanding of business.

Yes...Titan won't go down because prosumers buy it and save vs. M6000's which are probably north of $5000 they say. There are only so many wafers to go around also (and the die is ~610mm^2), nvidia likely can't even get as much as they want already, so even then no way to lower price without just being stupid about it. Being sold out and hawked on ebay for a few hundred extra for them means it was priced too low (even if I hate high prices...LOL). I really don't think tons of gamers are buying them, it's mostly prosumers looking at $5000-6500 bills I'd guess (price currently is $6500 online), as for them it is a HUGE DEAL. At that price you could buy 4 TitanX's and pocket $2500 for the rest of your PC...LOL. Having said that, it's $5000 at newegg pre-order, so clearly they're marking up at safeharbor for $6500 for as long as they can. Jeez. We'll see what newegg does when they hit in stock.

Good business=maximizing profits, period. You should set your prices at what the market will bear, or as near as you can to that price. But they're actually being kind giving some users the option to pay $1000 instead of M6000's $5000+. Titans sell out, and NV says they can't make them fast enough, which says all I need to know. If they're stuck on the shelves you're priced too high, but if they're sold faster than you can make them, you're probably doing us (the ones that can afford it anyway) a pretty big favor. Excellent deal for indie game makers (meaning small budgets, who would cringe about $5000 prices) who also game themselves.

 

[somebodyspecial]

@Loki1944 & @somebodyspecial

I think Nvidia's implementing a good long-term strategy to position itself for larger performance leaps in coming years.

The fact of the matter is that the company stands to make enough money from efficiency improvements so that it must increase its market-share in the mobile space.

Nvidia does well in the high-end desktop space, but that's a MUCH smaller space than mobile. If they can get Apple to licence their graphics tech, or Samsung, for mobile phones, then they'll really grow in a significant way.

Landing contracts like that can really invigorate R&D spending across the board, including performance-based research and development.

Agree pretty much, I definitely think they'll be growing as they move into auto more, get GRID going for gaming & out of beta for enterprise, and at some point rule gpu in a large portion of mobile (coming soon I think as gpu becomes the most important part in mobile for gaming). But claiming they should be selling for less is pretty ridiculous given the M6000's price of $5000+ and not being able to produce them fast enough (likely due to die size and fighting with everyone over TSMC's wafers for big gpus). There is a cheaper GAMER option coming shortly anyway at 6GB, 980TI.

I think NV rules the roost by next xmas (not 2015, but 2016 xmas) as tons of unreal 4/unity 5 etc games hit for mobile that push the hardware. That will be just in time for NV to make up for possibly losing Intel's $266mil/yr. Licensing from others can do this too (as you mention samsung/apple etc). I really doubt they'll lose their lawsuit, and apple will have to deal like it or not. Whether that means using gpu, IP, fees etc who knows, but something will need to be done. Samsung has fabs NV needs, so are better positioned for some deal (also mem, screens & modems now etc for NV products), but the rest really have nothing NV would want. Qcom has a modem but if I can get it all from samsung+fabs, I'd stick it to qcom/img.l etc. Qcom is a larger threat to tegra than samsung (due to selling their chip to everyone and nothing NV needs with samsung having a comparable modem and more).

I really hope AMD gets in here massively in the next year before NV gets a major gaming foothold. There is room enough for both, but not if one gets an even larger lead in gpu (IE AMD needs to start making some serious money as opposed to losses yearly). AMD needs to be in before what I'm saying about NV taking over mobile gpu becomes true and they have a huge catalog of games optimized for NV tech/tegrazone. Maybe NV's suit against mobile people will lead to an AMD victory/lic fees also once NV gets done laying the groundwork as they don't have the money currently to fund a multi-year lawsuit+R&D already dropping. Either way I hope both sides grow far faster. If you look at NV, and take out the 266mil/yr, they'd need to quadruple profits to get back to 2007 levels of income. They have many ways to get there, but lowering prices isn't one of them Constantly low pricing on AMD stuff isn't a way for them to get back to yearly profits either. Unlike Intel (who doesn't mind a price war in the low-end with 10B income already), NV wants AMD to stop selling low so profits can rise for both. For AMD that would mean actually making a profit finally. I expect this Q to be another loss, and likely the same for all of 2015 unless they have a hit 300 series and charge for that HIT! But if stupid management has a WINNER and prices to beat NV pricing, they'll blow it again. Price a WINNER like it's a WINNER AMD!

 

[anthony8989]

I think people like Arabian Knight aren't understanding that there are more Titan buyers than Titans in existence. So the idea of making profit through volume versus margin is useless - there is no volume; must turn to margin.

 

[somebodyspecial]

I think people like Arabian Knight aren't understanding that there are more Titan buyers than Titans in existence. So the idea of making profit through volume versus margin is useless - there is no volume; must turn to margin.

Summed up nicely with so few words...LOL. Touchdown If they (stupidly) sold them for $700, they'd still be hawked on ebay 10 seconds later for $1200+ and run out just as fast. You would satisfy the exact number of users you are now at $1000, and probably the exact number if they'd priced it at $1200-1500 given Ebay pricing...LOL. I really think they priced it too low if it's so easy to ebay it for 20%+ seconds later and you can't produce enough.

 

[Arabian Knight]

I think people like Arabian Knight aren't understanding that there are more Titan buyers than Titans in existence. So the idea of making profit through volume versus margin is useless - there is no volume; must turn to margin.

Summed up nicely with so few words...LOL. Touchdown If they (stupidly) sold them for $700, they'd still be hawked on ebay 10 seconds later for $1200+ and run out just as fast. You would satisfy the exact number of users you are now at $1000, and probably the exact number if they'd priced it at $1200-1500 given Ebay pricing...LOL. I really think they priced it too low if it's so easy to ebay it for 20%+ seconds later and you can't produce enough.

I dont think so . again , I am waiting for AMD , and mark my words , if AMD new card is at the same speed , the Titan X will sell for $700 ...

 

[CptBarbossa]

Dude, NEVER say "Mark my words". If you are correct no one will like the "I told you so" and if you are wrong people will just laugh.

I want AMD on top but some people will pay stupid money for stupid things despite evidence that a cheaper product is in fact better. Is the r9 295x2 better than the Titan Z? Yes. Was it half the price? Yes. Did people still pay twice as much for the Titan Z? YES! Does it still cost twice as much as the r9 295x2 and are people still buying it? YES!

I think people like Arabian Knight aren't understanding that there are more Titan buyers than Titans in existence. So the idea of making profit through volume versus margin is useless - there is no volume; must turn to margin.

Summed up nicely with so few words...LOL. Touchdown If they (stupidly) sold them for $700, they'd still be hawked on ebay 10 seconds later for $1200+ and run out just as fast. You would satisfy the exact number of users you are now at $1000, and probably the exact number if they'd priced it at $1200-1500 given Ebay pricing...LOL. I really think they priced it too low if it's so easy to ebay it for 20%+ seconds later and you can't produce enough.

I dont think so . again , I am waiting for AMD , and mark my words , if AMD new card is at the same speed , the Titan X will sell for $700 ...

 

[Arabian Knight]

Dude, NEVER say "Mark my words". If you are correct no one will like the "I told you so" and if you are wrong people will just laugh.

I want AMD on top but some people will pay stupid money for stupid things despite evidence that a cheaper product is in fact better. Is the r9 295x2 better than the Titan Z? Yes. Was it half the price? Yes. Did people still pay twice as much for the Titan Z? YES! Does it still cost twice as much as the r9 295x2 and are people still buying it? YES!

I think people like Arabian Knight aren't understanding that there are more Titan buyers than Titans in existence. So the idea of making profit through volume versus margin is useless - there is no volume; must turn to margin.

Summed up nicely with so few words...LOL. Touchdown If they (stupidly) sold them for $700, they'd still be hawked on ebay 10 seconds later for $1200+ and run out just as fast. You would satisfy the exact number of users you are now at $1000, and probably the exact number if they'd priced it at $1200-1500 given Ebay pricing...LOL. I really think they priced it too low if it's so easy to ebay it for 20%+ seconds later and you can't produce enough.

I dont think so . again , I am waiting for AMD , and mark my words , if AMD new card is at the same speed , the Titan X will sell for $700 ...

ummm , I remember also nvidia lowered Titan Z from 3000$ to 1800$

http://www.techpowerup.com/204653/nvidia-cuts-geforce-gtx-titan-z-price-by-37-percent-but-for-oems-only.html

cheeeers

 

[CptBarbossa]

Dude, NEVER say "Mark my words". If you are correct no one will like the "I told you so" and if you are wrong people will just laugh.

I want AMD on top but some people will pay stupid money for stupid things despite evidence that a cheaper product is in fact better. Is the r9 295x2 better than the Titan Z? Yes. Was it half the price? Yes. Did people still pay twice as much for the Titan Z? YES! Does it still cost twice as much as the r9 295x2 and are people still buying it? YES!

I think people like Arabian Knight aren't understanding that there are more Titan buyers than Titans in existence. So the idea of making profit through volume versus margin is useless - there is no volume; must turn to margin.

Summed up nicely with so few words...LOL. Touchdown If they (stupidly) sold them for $700, they'd still be hawked on ebay 10 seconds later for $1200+ and run out just as fast. You would satisfy the exact number of users you are now at $1000, and probably the exact number if they'd priced it at $1200-1500 given Ebay pricing...LOL. I really think they priced it too low if it's so easy to ebay it for 20%+ seconds later and you can't produce enough.

I dont think so . again , I am waiting for AMD , and mark my words , if AMD new card is at the same speed , the Titan X will sell for $700 ...

ummm , I remember also nvidia lowered Titan Z from 3000$ to 1800$

http://www.techpowerup.com/204653/nvidia-cuts-geforce-gtx-titan-z-price-by-37-percent-but-for-oems-only.html

cheeeers

That was 2 months after release, a long time after benches showed the r9 295x2 was better, and it still cost more. My point still stands. People will pay for a name, regardless of value. Apple products are a perfect example. I can build a superior desktop for much less than it would cost to build a similar Mac. Does that mean people are going to ignore Mac? No. Does that mean Mac or Nvidia have bad products? Nope. It simply means that a brand names has a value to people, so even though an AND card may outperform a Nvidia card, Nvidia can probably charge more despite the discrepancy. Nvidia users are used to paying more, so they are ok with it.

 

[anthony8989]

The Titan Z was nvidias Icharus . It was overpriced at launch and to be honest no enthusiasts bought them. The Titan Z proved that there was no place for a single card SLI Titan, and certainly not one at $3000.

The price was too high for prosumers and the card was lacking too much for professionals to use seriously.

That's my opinion on the subject. And titan z notwithstanding I stand by my original statments on the Titan series.

 

[loki1944]

The Titan Z was nvidias Icharus . It was overpriced at launch and to be honest no enthusiasts bought them. The Titan Z proved that there was no place for a single card SLI Titan, and certainly not one at $3000.

The price was too high for prosumers and the card was lacking too much for professionals to use seriously.

That's my opinion on the subject. And titan z notwithstanding I stand by my original statments on the Titan series.

Although now I'd say it looks like a bargain for $500 cheaper than two Titan Xs, plus is has double precision I guess.

 

[somebodyspecial]

I think people like Arabian Knight aren't understanding that there are more Titan buyers than Titans in existence. So the idea of making profit through volume versus margin is useless - there is no volume; must turn to margin.

Summed up nicely with so few words...LOL. Touchdown If they (stupidly) sold them for $700, they'd still be hawked on ebay 10 seconds later for $1200+ and run out just as fast. You would satisfy the exact number of users you are now at $1000, and probably the exact number if they'd priced it at $1200-1500 given Ebay pricing...LOL. I really think they priced it too low if it's so easy to ebay it for 20%+ seconds later and you can't produce enough.

I dont think so . again , I am waiting for AMD , and mark my words , if AMD new card is at the same speed , the Titan X will sell for $700 ...

You're forgetting there is an audience that would usually pay $5000+ for this card (it's called M6000). As long as the other option is $5000, they won't need to lower the price on this card one bit. You continue to think of titan in terms of a GAMER, instead of a GAME MAKER (among other content) that happens to play games. That is a big difference and this reason (CUDA and making stuff with CUDA at FAR lower costs than a $5000 pro card) is why it will continue to sell regardless of AMD pricing or even how the card fares in games. Sure gamers may exit if AMD puts out something cheaper that is equal or maybe even better in games, but PROSUMERS will NOT exit when the only other option for fp32 intensive WORK is $5000. A few rich (or foolish?) gamers can afford $1000 for the card as a gamer, but make no mistake prosumers buy this card and LAUGH about getting away at $1000 instead of $5000. NV doesn't have to lower the price regardless of gamers as prosumers buy enough anyway to keep the shelves bare.

Titan Z dropped to $1800 because $3000 was too close to the pro card as OP noted. Also note even at $1800 it wasn't BELOW AMD's R295x2 See the point? Titans come with a value that puts them above just gaming even if they perform worse than something cheaper in gaming. TitanZ still had merit for DP+Cuda people (but not at $3000). Gamers would have wisely went 780TI sli and laughed about the savings and PERF in games. Even if AMD puts out a card that is faster in games, it still can't do Cuda and Cuda runs on 85-90% of the market for pro apps. That's what you get when you invest in something for nearly a decade (which you can only do with...PROFITS).

https://developer.nvidia.com/academia/centers?type=All&region=All&country=All
What is that, a list of like 500 schools teaching it? Titans exist for people who would probably never buy a $5000 card at home, but might be able to buy $1000 one to learn, freelance etc with so they can get a job at a place at some point that can pay for the $5000 one (or pay them well enough so they can actually buy a pro card for home use) Titans don't sell out because they can play games (the bulk of them go to prosumers). You don't seem to get it, so I'm done here...I digress...

 

[Wisecracker]

Yup. You did digress

Holding your breath, jumping up and down, and screaming, "The new Titan is a prosumer compute card" does not make it so.

In gaming, the 'cost per frame' is nearly double that of either Radeon, and substantially more than even the GTX 980 and 780ti.

It's big, hot and not that efficient. Even with high yields (doubtful) you simply cannot harvest that many 601mm2 -sized chips from a 300mm wafer.

It ain't demand. It's supply.

 

[mlee 2500]

This notion that you can't game in 4K with current generation mainstream cards is rubbish...especially when using GSYNC. Playing the latest *FPS* games at maximum settings....sure...that's a bit of a tall order for the current crop of cards...and that's what most of the hard core gamers asserting that 4K isn't ready for prime time are basing the assessment on. But the reality is a GTX970 can push non-FPS at 4K at very high settings, and a 980 can do most FPS just a couple tiers short of maximum when paired with GSYNC... and there are allot of folks...probably the majority...where that fits the bill.

 

[mlee 2500]

This notion that you can't game in 4K with current generation mainstream cards is rubbish...especially when using GSYNC. Playing the latest *FPS* games at maximum settings....sure...that's a bit of a tall order for the current crop of cards...and that's what most of the hard core gamers asserting that 4K isn't ready for prime time are basing the assessment on. But the reality is a GTX970 can push non-FPS at 4K at very high settings, and a 980 can do most FPS just a couple tiers short of maximum when paired with GSYNC... and there are allot of folks...probably the majority...where that fits the bill.

 

[mapesdhs]

Problem there is having to take into account the added cost of gsync. Also, for some games just using
high-realism mods is enough to strain the performance and/or RAM capacity of cards like the 970 and
even the 980 (Skyrim is a typical example; check the OCN pics thread for dozens of typical comments
on the subject).

Also, people who want this level of hw tend to be the same people who want high frame rates at high
detail, ie. compromising one against the other is unwanted, which usually rules out everything at mid-
range or lower anyway.

The game I'm playing most of the time atm is typical, namely Crysis. No need for a top-end card to run
it at reasonable speed, but once it's modded and tweaked, I found even two 3GB 580 SLI wasn't
enough to get more than 45fps, with drops well below that sometimes (this is a setup with vastly
improved detail - much longer draw distances, LOD levels, shadow maps, etc.) Thus, even though
it's an old(er) game now and I'm only playing at 1920x1200, upgrading to a GTX 980 made a big
difference. If I was playing the game at 4K I'd definitely want at least two 980s to keep the smooth
motion I want with the same detail levels.

Likewise, for playing Elite Dangerous with maxed out details, I never want the fps to drop below 60
(vsync is forced on), so a 980 was perfect for 1920x1200, but at 4K I'd want two.

Newer games, mods, available effects and detail options just add to the loading. It's not difficult to
bring any single good card to its knees once one starts messing about with the settings to radically
enhance the realism. I've done the same sort of tweaks with Crysis Warhead, Crysis2, Oblivion,
Stalker, etc., and I'm sure if I was playing any of the latest games I'd be doing the same thing &
thus need even better GPUs.

Medium detail may be ok for some, but not for me, I want it maxed & modded up the wazoo. Ditto
frame rates, I want it high, enough so it'll stay smooth even when loads of stuff is happening all
at once. The cost of a suitable GPU setup for a newer game to achieve this is unpleasant, so at
any given time I stick to slightly older games for which just one reasonably new card can provide
what I want. Adding another for SLI later provides a buffer if such is needed later.

For those who are playing newer games though, especially at 4K, then one top-end card may very
well not be enough if they too want to crank up the detail levels and keep a smooth frame rate.

As you said yourself, 'a couple of tiers short...', but the kind of people who are happy to buy top-end
cards that cost a lot are, rather like the hifi buffs, the same people who typically aren't satisified with
being below the best of what's possible. They want it maxed, they want it smooth, and they're happy
to pay for it if the solution is available.

If I was playing BF4 or whatever these days, I'd be going for 980 SLI minimum, but more likely Titan X SLI.
Overkill for playing with medium settings of course, but I don't like medium settings with any game, it
looks terrible. I hate scenery popping, etc. With Crysis, I shoved out the shadow and LOD settings way
out so that I couldn't see items appearing, and I wanted NPCs to be visible as far away as possible.

As for gsync, I really don't care. The monitors are too expensive and I'm fine with 60Hz locked.

Ian.

 

[cub_fanatic]

Yup. You did digress

Holding your breath, jumping up and down, and screaming, "The new Titan is a prosumer compute card" does not make it so.

In gaming, the 'cost per frame' is nearly double that of either Radeon, and substantially more than even the GTX 980 and 780ti.

It's big, hot and not that efficient. Even with high yields (doubtful) you simply cannot harvest that many 601mm2 -sized chips from a 300mm wafer.

It ain't demand. It's supply.

Very true about supply. If they could somehow make 1 million of these things a week, they would never even come close to selling them out. The only reason that it appears they are "flying off the shelves" is because there is not that many of them. The same thing happened with the GTX 980 and 970. Some people even thought NV was holding back supply from the vendors to create the illusion that the demand was high for the new Maxwells. When crypto currency GPU mining was creating frenzy buying of AMD GPUs, that was a real demand issue. The cards were already made and even the previous two generations of AMDs were being bought by the boatload. Once all the people who actually wanted Titan Xs buy them, the "demand" will end. And there really aren't that many people who will wake up tomorrow and be willing to charge $1,000+ on their paypal account for one of them. Right now, there are more of these people than there are cards and that is the only reason there are leeches on ebay selling them at a mark up trying to rip off those who couldn't get one from newegg or amazon, etc.

 

[somebodyspecial]

Yup. You did digress

Holding your breath, jumping up and down, and screaming, "The new Titan is a prosumer compute card" does not make it so.

In gaming, the 'cost per frame' is nearly double that of either Radeon, and substantially more than even the GTX 980 and 780ti.

It's big, hot and not that efficient. Even with high yields (doubtful) you simply cannot harvest that many 601mm2 -sized chips from a 300mm wafer.

It ain't demand. It's supply.

Yup. You did digress

Holding your breath, jumping up and down, and screaming, "The new Titan is a prosumer compute card" does not make it so.

In gaming, the 'cost per frame' is nearly double that of either Radeon, and substantially more than even the GTX 980 and 780ti.

It's big, hot and not that efficient. Even with high yields (doubtful) you simply cannot harvest that many 601mm2 -sized chips from a 300mm wafer.

It ain't demand. It's supply.

Very true about supply. If they could somehow make 1 million of these things a week, they would never even come close to selling them out. The only reason that it appears they are "flying off the shelves" is because there is not that many of them. The same thing happened with the GTX 980 and 970. Some people even thought NV was holding back supply from the vendors to create the illusion that the demand was high for the new Maxwells. When crypto currency GPU mining was creating frenzy buying of AMD GPUs, that was a real demand issue. The cards were already made and even the previous two generations of AMDs were being bought by the boatload. Once all the people who actually wanted Titan Xs buy them, the "demand" will end. And there really aren't that many people who will wake up tomorrow and be willing to charge $1,000+ on their paypal account for one of them. Right now, there are more of these people than there are cards and that is the only reason there are leeches on ebay selling them at a mark up trying to rip off those who couldn't get one from newegg or amazon, etc.

You're making assumptions you can't prove. Also the TitanX is being re-sold constantly on ebay for $1200+ (you seem to know this mentioning ebay, didn't you see the pricing?), so not sure they aren't willing to pay $1000 when they keep re-selling them for 20%+ easily. The data says otherwise. Go ahead and check pricing on ebay and winning bids. You're forgetting this card is a duplicate of M6000 which goes for $5000. There is a pretty substantial group of people that are NOT buying them with the intention of gaming first but can't afford $5000 or realize two to four of these smokes that $5000 card. Also see the quarterly reports for NV, which would say quite the opposite. They are selling fewer cards for higher margins (IE Titans, which NV has commented sell very great), and the bottom line/top line shows this even in a PC period down 12% for Intel etc. The only way sales are down and revenue sets records is higher margin products like titan selling well (the margins say the same in the reports, you should read them).

They put those numbers up while tegra is losing a tons yearly still which if removed from the numbers would be even better on bottom line. Note though I'm not saying dump tegra, heck no. Intel basically is paying for those losses until android gaming forces people to buy more tegra for gpu requirements going up or NV gains in lawsuits over IP. Either way keep the devices, and upgrades to them coming until gaming takes over and you get to a fully polished 64bit OS finally netting you a full desktop like PC running ARM64 and a discrete NV card with nothing from AMD/Intel inside! NVlink replaces hypertransport, PCIE and Infiniband, so this is clearly their goal probably with pascal etc that will be just in time for google to get the OS polished up and games on unreal 4 tech etc to be out pushing the need for full on gpu power in an ARM PC box. The console is the first shot across WINTEL's bow (and xbox1/ps4). It's 40w for now, but I can't wait to see what a 500-1000w PC like full box sports in 2016/2017. You won't be paying the Intel or MS Windows fee either. Slap a PC like heatsink/fan on a 14nm soc, run it at 3.5-4ghz and laugh about how close you are to intel. You may end up better considering the rate of gain in IPC on ARM per gen and how fast they're doing it (already having A72's coming).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8957/arm-announces-cortex-a72

http://www.phonearena.com/news/ARM-Cortex-A72-preview-the-successor-to-A57-coming-on-phones-in-2016_id65923

If it's anywhere near 1.9x A57, we aren't talking Intel gains here (5%-7% for each gen on cpu for sandy, ivy, haswell, likely broadwell). This is clearly coming from TSMC, but as samsung re-made A57 for 14nm they can surely do the same for A72, or possibly move to 10nm by then anyway (fab race is certainly heating up, and samsung solved the 14nm yield issue first thus stealing qcom, apple,nv customers etc). Put a desktop heatsink/fan on one and how fast is it cranked to max? I'm definitely not saying dump tegra. Auto is growing and will fill the gap as Intel possibly leaves the lic fees until gaming takes off.

But the main point is, revenue & margin doesn't line up with your theory. Are they selling a million? Probably not, but the first titan run was 100K and sold out immediately (days), and NV has commented in quarterly reports it hasn't slowed down since, rev after rev. Pro app users are buying most of them as value there is HUGE for all models vs. $3000-5000 pro models. The value of this card is directly aimed at FP32/cuda content creators, even if NV hucks it to gamers too.

 

[Eggz]

So many wordz!

 

[cub_fanatic]

You're making assumptions you can't prove. Also the TitanX is being re-sold constantly on ebay for $1200+ (you seem to know this mentioning ebay, didn't you see the pricing?), so not sure they aren't willing to pay $1000 when they keep re-selling them for 20%+ easily. The data says otherwise. Go ahead and check pricing on ebay and winning bids. You're forgetting this card is a duplicate of M6000 which goes for $5000. There is a pretty substantial group of people that are NOT buying them with the intention of gaming first but can't afford $5000 or realize two to four of these smokes that $5000 card. Also see the quarterly reports for NV, which would say quite the opposite. They are selling fewer cards for higher margins (IE Titans, which NV has commented sell very great), and the bottom line/top line shows this even in a PC period down 12% for Intel etc. The only way sales are down and revenue sets records is higher margin products like titan selling well (the margins say the same in the reports, you should read them).

They put those numbers up while tegra is losing a tons yearly still which if removed from the numbers would be even better on bottom line. Note though I'm not saying dump tegra, heck no. Intel basically is paying for those losses until android gaming forces people to buy more tegra for gpu requirements going up or NV gains in lawsuits over IP. Either way keep the devices, and upgrades to them coming until gaming takes over and you get to a fully polished 64bit OS finally netting you a full desktop like PC running ARM64 and a discrete NV card with nothing from AMD/Intel inside! NVlink replaces hypertransport, PCIE and Infiniband, so this is clearly their goal probably with pascal etc that will be just in time for google to get the OS polished up and games on unreal 4 tech etc to be out pushing the need for full on gpu power in an ARM PC box. The console is the first shot across WINTEL's bow (and xbox1/ps4). It's 40w for now, but I can't wait to see what a 500-1000w PC like full box sports in 2016/2017. You won't be paying the Intel or MS Windows fee either. Slap a PC like heatsink/fan on a 14nm soc, run it at 3.5-4ghz and laugh about how close you are to intel. You may end up better considering the rate of gain in IPC on ARM per gen and how fast they're doing it (already having A72's coming).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8957/arm-announces-cortex-a72

http://www.phonearena.com/news/ARM-Cortex-A72-preview-the-successor-to-A57-coming-on-phones-in-2016_id65923

If it's anywhere near 1.9x A57, we aren't talking Intel gains here (5%-7% for each gen on cpu for sandy, ivy, haswell, likely broadwell). This is clearly coming from TSMC, but as samsung re-made A57 for 14nm they can surely do the same for A72, or possibly move to 10nm by then anyway (fab race is certainly heating up, and samsung solved the 14nm yield issue first thus stealing qcom, apple,nv customers etc). Put a desktop heatsink/fan on one and how fast is it cranked to max? I'm definitely not saying dump tegra. Auto is growing and will fill the gap as Intel possibly leaves the lic fees until gaming takes off.

But the main point is, revenue & margin doesn't line up with your theory. Are they selling a million? Probably not, but the first titan run was 100K and sold out immediately (days), and NV has commented in quarterly reports it hasn't slowed down since, rev after rev. Pro app users are buying most of them as value there is HUGE for all models vs. $3000-5000 pro models. The value of this card is directly aimed at FP32/cuda content creators, even if NV hucks it to gamers too.

I don't care what the people who buy it are using it for, be it gaming, CUDA or as a tiny boat anchor - if NV is somehow theoretically able to produce 1 million of them per week and 52 million of them per year, they wouldn't sell out at these prices. The total number of working and sold Titan Xs is still in the thousands. There are probably more defective Titan X cores made than there are 100% working cores. That is why they are selling out and being hoarded by greedy ebayers - production is running at a snails pace. Once every person who wants one gets one, the demand will fall flat on its face or NV will be on the next architecture. And the number of people who actually want one at full price or more is nowhere near a million. NV is basically making a batch, waiting until they sell out then making another batch. They want to just barely meet the demand of the niche product so that they don't lose any money producing excess stock. There will probably never be a Titan X sitting on a shelf collecting dust. The whole demand idea is an illusion. Go find some numbers of how many Titan Xs are being made and the total number sold to retailers as well as consumers (at this point probably an identical figure). There are no public figures - only little micro blogs on financial sites written by investors who are long NV talking about how the Titan X is selling like hotcakes and is never in stock anywhere. Go back a few years and you'll see the same articles about the Kepler Titan.