Great preliminary review Thanks!
I first read this on my mobile and thought I’d accidentally skipped to comments, but after reading a bit realised why the reviewer started off that way.
Other reviews I have seen so far start off the review and end the review on the basis that anyone buying a Titan X owns a Ferrari and lives in a 12 bedroom mansion, and that its all about class, but this is completely wrong and will only end up starting off bickering amongst readers, throwing the more money than sense insults at people that want/decide to buy Titan X.
In my option all the previous Titans were never really meant for the mainstream gamer, and more focused on people wanting an Quadro / Tesla alternative at an affordable price, that occasionally game. People targeted GTX Titan X owners after the 980Ti was launched, because it was a few FPS faster in some titles, mainly because the first reviews used old drivers and data for the GTX Titan X, and new for the 980ti that was optimised for Maxwell, but anyone interested in content creation, GPU rendering etc would choose the GTX Titan X over the 980ti because of the onboard memory, 4GB just isn’t enough for most professionals, so a few FPS was never going to sway the decision, but a few gamers and trolls turned it into a class war. Glad this reviewer underlined exactly what Titan X is, and its place in the market before starting off the review. A+++
There’s more to computing than just playing games, and the games you love so much, many of those game developers probably choose Quadro’s or Titans for the extra Vram….
I currently have 4x Older ( 2688 core) GTX Titans for GPU based rendering. I use 3ds Max and Iray, and usually have 3 or 4 large contracts every months from Industrial or architectural designers. At the end of each project I am asked to produce anything from 10 to 50 FHD images noise free, so that usually means around 10,000 iterations, per image otherwise clients complain about noise.
The old GTX Titans I have scale beautifully in Max and Iray I.e.
An interior architectural scene, FHD, 10,000 iterations.
1x GTX Titan = 60 mins
2x GTX Titans = 30 mins
3x GTX Titans = 20 mins
4x GTX Titans = 15 mins
So currently at the end of a project it can mean a few days worth of rendering, and long hours into the night if a client hits me with a last minute deadline, which they usually do.. Oh I’ve decided I want to show these designs to a client in a meeting in 2 days can you do it?? Aaaaahhhhh!! ( I have a life away from this workstation you know!!! )
So if the single precision numbers are correct for the new Titan X, and work out the same in real world use, it would bean cutting my render times down to a third, meaning less waiting for renders to complete before I can move on to the next view/ scene, and more room for new clients. The cards will pay for themselves in a few months, like the last ones did so not worried about the cost too much, although it will be painful seeing the figures disappear from my bank account, I was already expecting it. So its nothing to do with class, ( I don’t even own a car :- (( ) and definitely about good business sense, plus there’s the added bonus of having 4x Titan X for when (if ever : -((( ) I get the chance to game.
I was so tempted to hit the buy button yesterday, but didn’t, and I wont, at least for now. The reason is simple, HEAT. I currently have 4x dual slot cards sandwiched together in a large case modded to house extra fans, but fans can only go so far based on ambient temperature before the heat just keeps building up, and rendering at 100% load on 4x Titans gets hot fast, so before rendering I have to ramp up the fans to 85% especially in the summer to keep the cards around the 70c mark, so they don’t die on me after a few months/ years, had them over 3 years now, and touch laminated wood, they are still going strong, But I decided my next build would be 100% liquid cooled to get around this problem.
But what options do we have? To buy directly from Nvidia, limited to two ( although they sell 4-way HB bridges on the same page ) and only their standard cooling solution.
Until Titan X is let loose to the 3rd parties, and a hybrid or copper solution is on the market my 4x Titan X dreams are on hold, plus Autodesk and the Iray development team as always are slow to the starting line, and still waiting for Pascal support..
Apparently they are working on supporting and optimising for Pascal…
Ah well..
Will there be 3rd party solutions for Titan X in the near future?
If not, bad move Nvidia, consider the uses for this card and the heat they generate over long periods, there must be a liquid cooling solution for this card!
And what of the 1080ti? If AMD do launch a Titan X Killer later in the year, early next year, Nvidia will launch the 1080ti but with the full core count and at a cheaper price, and unlike the 980ti, it will have at least 8GB which is enough for most DCC work, ending up putting anyone that brought Titan X’s backs up the wrong way, and starting off the bickering again… Nvidia usually do this, always proving they could have launched the full core GP102 version a lot cheaper in the first place..
Looking forward to the productivity benchmarks!
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