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

[mapesdhs]

They wouldn't use the Titan X though, because as I said earlier, it does not have ECC and numerous
other features which are essential for the sort of task run at such insitutions. Teslas have a full speed
PCIe return path (gamer cards don't), various caching features not found on gamer cards, etc. It's a
broader issue than just the degree of 64bit fp strength.

Note that only certain types of supercomputer-level compute task are suitable for GPU acceleration,
because of the complexity of inter-node communication. Striking the right fine/course-grain balance
is critical, hence the existence of shared-memory systems like the UV2 which can work much better
when a lot of data has to be managed aswell as the raw compute load, though such systems can
exploit GPUs aswell. I'm still stuck with a lowly 36-CPU Onyx3800 IR4, so if you have a spare Titan
SC then feel free to send it over. ;D

Ian.

PS. Highly likely that behind the scenes NVIDIA makes custom undisclosed GPUs for DARPA, Lockheed
and others anyway. SGI did the same thing 20 years ago, doubt much has changed. Probably expt
with custom multi-GPU arrays, units with a lot more RAM (forget 12GB, I mean more like 300GB), etc.
Most of SGI's gfx people moved to NVIDIA.

 

[jmanusa6]

1. AMD R9 295x2 does outperforms the Titan X. Don't care about how many GPUs they have its each companies top card vs. Won't matter 390x should beat the Titan X, even if it doesn't later this year the 395x2 will destroy it for the same price.

2. Don't give a shiz about power efficiancy, If you do buy a console and Prius.

3. AMD needs to succeed this round to keep competition alive and thriving.

 

[nikoli707]

1. AMD R9 295x2 does outperforms the Titan X. Don't care about how many GPUs they have its each companies top card vs. Won't matter 390x should beat the Titan X, even if it doesn't later this year the 395x2 will destroy it for the same price.

2. Don't give a shiz about power efficiancy, If you do buy a console and Prius.

3. AMD needs to succeed this round to keep competition alive and thriving.

lol, power efficiency is everything. the card needs to run on a 8pin+8pin power envelope.

 

[mapesdhs]

That, and noise, AMD's efforts have been far too loud aswell.

Ian.

 

[cub_fanatic]

1. AMD R9 295x2 does outperforms the Titan X. Don't care about how many GPUs they have its each companies top card vs. Won't matter 390x should beat the Titan X, even if it doesn't later this year the 395x2 will destroy it for the same price.

2. Don't give a shiz about power efficiancy, If you do buy a console and Prius.

3. AMD needs to succeed this round to keep competition alive and thriving.

Nice non-existent build in your sig. You are mostly right, though. The 395x2, if they make it, will not cost $1,000 USD at launch. It might even be more than the 295x2 launch price which was $1,500. But, yeah, power efficiency especially when it comes to consumer level gaming, doesn't mean much. Even if you are in the most expensive city in the country for cost per kw/h, it would take years before a single Titan X pays itself off vs a 295x2 even though power consumption is almost half of the 295x2 or a difference of roughly 200 watts on average under gaming load. For most people, the cost of 200 watts per hour is less than a half a penny. If you game for 5 hours a day, you are losing a couple cents per day vs having a Titan X assuming you have at least an 80+ PSU. How long would it take you to make up the almost $350-400 price difference? Also, if you game for 5 hrs a day, you need another hobby. If you game longer than 5 hrs a day, you probably need help.

 

[loki1944]

1. AMD R9 295x2 does outperforms the Titan X. Don't care about how many GPUs they have its each companies top card vs. Won't matter 390x should beat the Titan X, even if it doesn't later this year the 395x2 will destroy it for the same price.

2. Don't give a shiz about power efficiancy, If you do buy a console and Prius.

3. AMD needs to succeed this round to keep competition alive and thriving.

Nice non-existent build in your sig. You are mostly right, though. The 395x2, if they make it, will not cost $1,000 USD at launch. It might even be more than the 295x2 launch price which was $1,500. But, yeah, power efficiency especially when it comes to consumer level gaming, doesn't mean much. Even if you are in the most expensive city in the country for cost per kw/h, it would take years before a single Titan X pays itself off vs a 295x2 even though power consumption is almost half of the 295x2 or a difference of roughly 200 watts on average under gaming load. For most people, the cost of 200 watts per hour is less than a half a penny. If you game for 5 hours a day, you are losing a couple cents per day vs having a Titan X assuming you have at least an 80+ PSU. How long would it take you to make up the almost $350-400 price difference? Also, if you game for 5 hrs a day, you need another hobby. If you game longer than 5 hrs a day, you probably need help.

That makes sense for people worried about saving pennies on power. Personally I don't care how much power it draws, I care more about performance.

 

[nikoli707]

its not about saving money on power. its about getting as much gpu horsepower on a 375w limit. more power efficiency means more gpu horsepower period. the more efficient it gets the more power you can stuff under the hood.

but obviously, we would all love a 500w 8 core 12ghz cpu and a 1000w 20000 core gpu so we could easily do 4k@120hz, but they dont attempt to make it... im not exactly sure why.

 

[TNT27]

AMD cards, excluding their huge stock cooling on high end card are very quiet, there is not much differences in noise between green and red.

We are comparing two generation old cards against brand new generation, yet the older generation red easily competes with the green.

Also note that HBM uses a lot less power than gddr5, and there was many points in time when amd had the upper hand in power consumtion, the companies trade blows very well, the 295x2 is a better performing card in games than Titan-x (as long as they support crossfire, which most do), costs a lot less, but it consumes almost tice the power.

HBM memeory will be a similar jump in performance as we saw when switching to gddr5 from ddr3.

 

[cub_fanatic]

its not about saving money on power. its about getting as much gpu horsepower on a 375w limit. more power efficiency means more gpu horsepower period. the more efficient it gets the more power you can stuff under the hood.

but obviously, we would all love a 500w 8 core 12ghz cpu and a 1000w 20000 core gpu so we could easily do 4k@120hz, but they dont attempt to make it... im not exactly sure why.

Not "period", the ability to cool the chip regardless of how efficient it is, is also part of "it". As long as you can keep the chip within an acceptable thermal range, it can be 1% efficient and waste 99% of the power it draws. Power efficiency is pretty much meaningless in consumer applications. The only area where is is a top priority is in the server market where hundreds or thousands of chips are running at nearly full load 24 hours a day.

 

[Eggz]

. . . Power efficiency is pretty much meaningless in consumer applications. The only area where is is a top priority is in the server market where hundreds or thousands of chips are running at nearly full load 24 hours a day.

There's a lot between "meaningless" and "top priority" when it comes to power efficiency. It makes a pretty big impact on consumer products when it comes up PSU compatibility, which is separate and apart from the electric bill.

Unless you have a high end power supply already, you have to add that cost in to any power hungry card. That will impact upgraders and system builders most, but it also impacts people making their own system from scratch a bit as well. Those making new personal systems have to spend a little more on a PSU, which is a smaller impact than the other two groups I mentioned.

Upgraders face having to buy a new PSU for high-power cards like the 295, but that would also be true of the Titan Z. So you have to factor in a few hundred bucks on top of the card in order to get it up and running reliably.

System builders will have to choose between lower quality PSUs with high wattage ratings, cutting their bottom line, or increasing prices to deliver high quality PSUs with high wattage output. The margin makes a big difference, since that's where the builders make their money.

The point is that power consumption does matter in the consumer sector, even if some individual consumers don't realize it.

 

[cub_fanatic]

. . . Power efficiency is pretty much meaningless in consumer applications. The only area where is is a top priority is in the server market where hundreds or thousands of chips are running at nearly full load 24 hours a day.

There's a lot between "meaningless" and "top priority" when it comes to power efficiency. It makes a pretty big impact on consumer products when it comes up PSU compatibility, which is separate and apart from the electric bill.

Unless you have a high end power supply already, you have to add that cost in to any power hungry card. That will impact upgraders and system builders most, but it also impacts people making their own system from scratch a bit as well. Those making new personal systems have to spend a little more on a PSU, which is a smaller impact than the other two groups I mentioned.

Upgraders face having to buy a new PSU for high-power cards like the 295, but that would also be true of the Titan Z. So you have to factor in a few hundred bucks on top of the card in order to get it up and running reliably.

System builders will have to choose between lower quality PSUs with high wattage ratings, cutting their bottom line, or increasing prices to deliver high quality PSUs with high wattage output. The margin makes a big difference, since that's where the builders make their money.

The point is that power consumption does matter in the consumer sector, even if some individual consumers don't realize it.

And you don't seem to realize the difference between power efficiency and power consumption. A chip can be extremely inefficient while consuming only 1 watt. Think about it for a second then go look it up in a dictionary.

 

[TNT27]

If we talk performance per watt, the 295x2 was better than the Titan-Z, not by much though.
I am pretty sure the performance per watt Titan-X wins against 295x2, but again not by much.

If we talk FPS/watt than Titan-x wins more than slightly, but not a lot
If we talk FPS/$ 295x2 Wins by far.

 

[nikoli707]

"meaningless"? if the silicon architecture doesn't get more efficient each generation we would be in a performance stalemate. or another company will produce a product that gives the same performance with much less power consumption. nobody would buy an iphone 7 if it got slightly better performance but only lasted 20 minutes on battery compared to other phone that gets slightly worse performance but will last 24 hours on battery. besides increasing performance, no matter how small the increase is, in todays world power efficiency is the number one most important aspect of all silicon in modern technology.

 

[Eggz]

And you don't seem to realize the difference between power efficiency and power consumption. A chip can be extremely inefficient while consuming only 1 watt. Think about it for a second then go look it up in a dictionary.

So apparently it's been a while since you've used a dictionary. They give definitions of single words, but that's besides the point.

Power consumption and efficiency are sufficiently related for the points in my last post to hold. Think about it for a second, but don't bother with a dictionary.

 

[cub_fanatic]

"meaningless"? if the silicon architecture doesn't get more efficient each generation we would be in a performance stalemate. or another company will produce a product that gives the same performance with much less power consumption. nobody would buy an iphone 7 if it got slightly better performance but only lasted 20 minutes on battery compared to other phone that gets slightly worse performance but will last 24 hours on battery. besides increasing performance, no matter how small the increase is, in todays world power efficiency is the number one most important aspect of all silicon in modern technology.

In laptops and phones, you forgot to add that to the end of your sentence of superlatives. The single most important aspect of enthusiast level gaming GPUs, is FPS or frames per second. They could not care less if each of their GPUs used 10,000 watts while only beating the #2 GPU by 10% while that GPU used 200 watts. If you are talking about battery powered devices and even non-enthusiast products, yes, power efficiency is very important. If you are talking to someone who speaks in "1337", it is beyond meaningless. Guess what, homies, the Titan X and 295x2, they are not your typical consumer-level hardware. Also, last time I checked, they weren't cell phones either.

 

[Eggz]

Guess what, homies, the Titan X and 295x2, they are not your typical consumer-level hardware [or] cell phones either.

I like how you try passing off obvious facts for insightful comments. Can I try:

Guess what, people, rocks aren't plants. And their not alive either!

 

[cub_fanatic]

Guess what, homies, the Titan X and 295x2, they are not your typical consumer-level hardware [or] cell phones either.

I like how you try passing off obvious facts for insightful comments. Can I try:

Guess what, people, rocks aren't plants. And their not alive either!

Nicely done. You nit-picked a sentence that was in response to someone (not you) who was talking about iphones and battery performance of portable computing devices in general. That sentence wasn't meant to be insightful. There is no reason to discuss the importance of power consumption and power efficiency of cell phones when we are talking about a top of the line enthusiast grade desktop GPU. And, yes, these aspects of the chip are of no concern to an enthusiast who wants to buy a Titan Z or X or 295x2. These things are very important to the chip designers and engineers at Nvidia and AMD but to the nerd with a $2,000 budget for just GPUs, power efficiency is the least of his/her worries. When I say stuff like "it is meaningless" know that I am referring to the consumer shopping for these cards, not the people or companies who design and make them.


Since you don't have anything to add to this conversation that you are trying to turn into a flame war, can I ask why you have a 750ti and a 780ti in your PC? Are you are using it as a dedicated CUDA processor?

 

[Vosgy]

Guess what, homies, the Titan X and 295x2, they are not your typical consumer-level hardware [or] cell phones either.

I like how you try passing off obvious facts for insightful comments. Can I try:

Guess what, people, rocks aren't plants. And their not alive either!

Nicely done. You nit-picked a sentence that was in response to someone (not you) who was talking about iphones and battery performance of portable computing devices in general. That sentence wasn't meant to be insightful. There is no reason to discuss the importance of power consumption and power efficiency of cell phones when we are talking about a top of the line enthusiast grade desktop GPU. And, yes, these aspects of the chip are of no concern to an enthusiast who wants to buy a Titan Z or X or 295x2. These things are very important to the chip designers and engineers at Nvidia and AMD but to the nerd with a $2,000 budget for just GPUs, power efficiency is the least of his/her worries. When I say stuff like "it is meaningless" know that I am referring to the consumer shopping for these cards, not the people or companies who design and make them.


Since you don't have anything to add to this conversation that you are trying to turn into a flame war, can I ask why you have a 750ti and a 780ti in your PC? Are you are using it as a dedicated CUDA processor?

Saying someone who has $2000+ to spend on GPUs alone doesn't care about efficiency is stupidity IMHO. One of the main differences between persons with a lot of disposable income and those without, despite probably having a better paying job, is that these people save money, they save it well, they waste money on as little things as possible and will never spend more then they have to. Wealthy people are scrooges, I've never met someone much better off then me who isn't a cheap bastard.

 

[jazzy663]

People are still arguing in this thread...?

 

[cub_fanatic]

Guess what, homies, the Titan X and 295x2, they are not your typical consumer-level hardware [or] cell phones either.

I like how you try passing off obvious facts for insightful comments. Can I try:

Guess what, people, rocks aren't plants. And their not alive either!

Nicely done. You nit-picked a sentence that was in response to someone (not you) who was talking about iphones and battery performance of portable computing devices in general. That sentence wasn't meant to be insightful. There is no reason to discuss the importance of power consumption and power efficiency of cell phones when we are talking about a top of the line enthusiast grade desktop GPU. And, yes, these aspects of the chip are of no concern to an enthusiast who wants to buy a Titan Z or X or 295x2. These things are very important to the chip designers and engineers at Nvidia and AMD but to the nerd with a $2,000 budget for just GPUs, power efficiency is the least of his/her worries. When I say stuff like "it is meaningless" know that I am referring to the consumer shopping for these cards, not the people or companies who design and make them.


Since you don't have anything to add to this conversation that you are trying to turn into a flame war, can I ask why you have a 750ti and a 780ti in your PC? Are you are using it as a dedicated CUDA processor?

Saying someone who has $2000+ to spend on GPUs alone doesn't care about efficiency is stupidity IMHO. One of the main differences between persons with a lot of disposable income and those without, despite probably having a better paying job, is that these people save money, they save it well, they waste money on as little things as possible and will never spend more then they have to. Wealthy people are scrooges, I've never met someone much better off then me who isn't a cheap bastard.

Well thought out argument - sorry, I mean "honest opinion" - coming from someone who has a 1,000 watt PSU.

 

[Vosgy]

Guess what, homies, the Titan X and 295x2, they are not your typical consumer-level hardware [or] cell phones either.

I like how you try passing off obvious facts for insightful comments. Can I try:

Guess what, people, rocks aren't plants. And their not alive either!

Nicely done. You nit-picked a sentence that was in response to someone (not you) who was talking about iphones and battery performance of portable computing devices in general. That sentence wasn't meant to be insightful. There is no reason to discuss the importance of power consumption and power efficiency of cell phones when we are talking about a top of the line enthusiast grade desktop GPU. And, yes, these aspects of the chip are of no concern to an enthusiast who wants to buy a Titan Z or X or 295x2. These things are very important to the chip designers and engineers at Nvidia and AMD but to the nerd with a $2,000 budget for just GPUs, power efficiency is the least of his/her worries. When I say stuff like "it is meaningless" know that I am referring to the consumer shopping for these cards, not the people or companies who design and make them.


Since you don't have anything to add to this conversation that you are trying to turn into a flame war, can I ask why you have a 750ti and a 780ti in your PC? Are you are using it as a dedicated CUDA processor?

Saying someone who has $2000+ to spend on GPUs alone doesn't care about efficiency is stupidity IMHO. One of the main differences between persons with a lot of disposable income and those without, despite probably having a better paying job, is that these people save money, they save it well, they waste money on as little things as possible and will never spend more then they have to. Wealthy people are scrooges, I've never met someone much better off then me who isn't a cheap bastard.

Well thought out argument - sorry, I mean "honest opinion" - coming from someone who has a 1,000 watt PSU.

Running at round 500W which is peak efficiency, Platinum efficiency, only cost $174 AUD, and in a country where a KWH is around 35c.

 

[Newbbuilder11]

People are still arguing in this thread...?

Im getting notifications about the argument around the clock. Pretty interesting to read it helps brush up my knowledge .

 

[Eggz]

That sentence wasn't meant to be insightful.

If lack of insight was the goal, then congratulations on the success. I took your point to be that, since efficiency matters in mobile, it doesn't matter for individual consumer computer components. You made the point by distinguishing that category from mobile. Okay. That puts you in a very small minority of people who honestly think that's true.

The microprocessor industry is actually set up around die shrinks, which increase both performance and power efficiency at the same time. Arguing that efficiency doesn't matter actually implies that the industry is incorrectly structured. I really don't think it is. The world's smartest people perpetuate the chip designs and micro-lithography required for CPU and GPU manufacturing. It's actually a mind blowing process that has revolutionized human existence permanently.

But let's assume what you say is true, and enthusiast consumers don't care at all about power efficient (which false for me and the enthusiasts I know). For sake of argument, however, let's roll with it. Essentially all chips come from a small handful of manufacturing processes, and the majority of the more powerful chips supply non-consumers. Such chips go toward industrial applications, even though the same manufacturing process generates the consumer chips as well.

Now let's consider the market sector of consumer enthusiasts, weighing them against others, who deliver a signed petition to Intel, AMD, Nvidia, or whoever, demanding decreased efficiency. The response I'd expect from any of those companies would be this: "I'm sorry. What's the complaint? We are in the business of constantly delivering the most advanced processing devices the world has ever seen, including the chips consumers buy. Our process produce both progressively faster and progressively more efficient chips. Our largest purchasers rely on that structure, so we aren't in a position to hamper what we consider a crucial part of technological advancement based on that request." Basically, I just don't see a significant problem with efficiency, and I still love performance.

[Y]ou don't have anything to add to this conversation

[W]hy you have a 750ti and a 780ti in your PC? Are you are using it as a dedicated CUDA processor?

I use the 780 ti for CUDA. The 750 ti was for a serious obsession I had with Borderlands 2 for a while. I really like PhysX, found that the 750 ti is a great PhysX card, and I didn't mind spending $120 to alleviate my PhysX bottleneck. It helped a lot in PhysX applications (e.g. Borderlands 2) without requiring much power. Below is a link to one of the benchmarks I did that showed a significant improvement.

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B0DnoLWfOUZxbHVBQnh5N3ZRS2c&usp=sharing

 

[cub_fanatic]

That sentence wasn't meant to be insightful.

If lack of insight was the goal, then congratulations on the success. I took your point to be that, since efficiency matters in mobile, it doesn't matter for individual consumer computer components. You made the point by distinguishing that category from mobile. Okay. That puts you in a very small minority of people who honestly think that's true.

The microprocessor industry is actually set up around die shrinks, which increase both performance and power efficiency at the same time. Arguing that efficiency doesn't matter actually implies that the industry is incorrectly structured. I really don't think it is. The world's smartest people perpetuate the chip designs and micro-lithography required for CPU and GPU manufacturing. It's actually a mind blowing process that has revolutionized human existence permanently.

But let's assume what you say is true, and enthusiast consumers don't care at all about power efficient (which false for me and the enthusiasts I know). For sake of argument, however, let's roll with it. Essentially all chips come from a small handful of manufacturing processes, and the majority of the more powerful chips supply non-consumers. Such chips go toward industrial applications, even though the same manufacturing process generates the consumer chips as well.

Now let's consider the market sector of consumer enthusiasts, weighing them against others, who deliver a signed petition to Intel, AMD, Nvidia, or whoever, demanding decreased efficiency. The response I'd expect from any of those companies would be this: "I'm sorry. What's the complaint? We are in the business of constantly delivering the most advanced processing devices the world has ever seen, including the chips consumers buy. Our process produce both progressively faster and progressively more efficient chips. Our largest purchasers rely on that structure, so we aren't in a position to hamper what we consider a crucial part of technological advancement based on that request." Basically, I just don't see a significant problem with efficiency, and I still love performance.

[Y]ou don't have anything to add to this conversation

[W]hy you have a 750ti and a 780ti in your PC? Are you are using it as a dedicated CUDA processor?

I use the 780 ti for CUDA. The 750 ti was for a serious obsession I had with Borderlands 2 for a while. I really like PhysX, found that the 750 ti is a great PhysX card, and I didn't mind spending $120 to alleviate my PhysX bottleneck. It helped a lot in PhysX applications (e.g. Borderlands 2) without requiring much power. Below is a link to one of the benchmarks I did that showed a significant improvement.

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B0DnoLWfOUZxbHVBQnh5N3ZRS2c&usp=sharing

And yet a Titan X, 980 or 780ti is less efficient than a 960 or 750ti when it comes to performance per watt. When an enthusiast is shopping for a GPU and sees that, they don't dismiss the 980 or 780ti and go for the 960 or 750ti because supposedly power efficiency is both "everything" and "the single most important aspect" of the GPU according to a couple posts I have read on this thread. They look at FPS charts. That is the single most important aspect of enthusiast PC gaming. They aren't going to say "look at that 960, it is so much more efficient than that 980 even though it gets way less FPS, I think I'll take that 960 instead of that 980 based solely on the fact that it is more efficient."

I never said they would rather have decreased efficiency, only that it isn't as much of a factor when looking at GPUs. If it really was that important, then enthusiasts wouldn't even buy PCs, they'd all be using laptops with highly efficient parts.

 

[anthony8989]

Yeah , well, Nvidia has AMD beat in both efficiency and performance - features, and support. You argue in favor of cards like the 295x2 over the Titan X based solely on performance per dollar , yet go on to compare the Titan X to the 960's performance to watt?
It's less efficient than a 960 , therefore enthusiasts care not for efficiency?

If your argument was a cheese, it would be Swiss .