News Nvidia's original GTX Titan benchmarked 11 years later — $1,000 card now 'barely usable' in modern titles, often beaten by AMD's sub-$200 RX 6400

[Admin]

A German review outlet has gone back and retested Nvidia's first GTX Titan graphics card 11 years after it launched to see how its performance stacks up to entry-level GPUs in 2024.

Nvidia's original GTX Titan benchmarked 11 years later — $1,000 card now 'barely usable' in modern titles, often beaten by AMD's sub-$200 RX 6400 : Read more

 

[bit_user]

But GPUs have basically stayed on the Moore's Law curve, at least until recently. So, this would be almost like comparing a 2.53 GHz Northwood Pentium 4 against a 486DX2-66.

The thing that's improved least is memory bandwidth (leaving aside HBM). However, bigger & faster caches have gone a long ways towards mitigating that bottleneck.

 

[rluker5]

Kepler was a one thing at a time arch and games eventually went more and more to concurrent compute around 2016. (also was the time that SLI compatibility started to fade away) There are still games it does well in, but the list of ones it currently does badly in dwarfs any issues Arc has.

But it is nice to see a review where they are showing the architecture's full potential. A clockspeed of 1250mhz was definitely doable and reviewers generally did comparisons with the card running at less than 1 ghz. That bothered me because I was getting 60 fps in newly released W3 med-hi@4k with SLI 780tis running at 1250. It was an awesome gaming experience. I'm still using the same TV monitor.

Kepler was good for it's time. That time has passed.

 

[Makaveli]

11 years is multiple life times in GPU cycles so not really surprised by the result.

 

[yeyibi]

According to Tom's Hardware GPU hierarchy, the original gtx titan is a bit weaker than a GeForce GTX 1660.

 

[a3dstorm]

I own one since the early days it was released, it still works today although not installed in any system at the moment. It was the longest lasting GPU I ever owned and I've been building my own PCs since 1998. I used it on a hackintosh connected to a 60hz 1440p IPS Shimian monitor up to MACOS Mojave (so for 6 years I ran the Titan GTX and was running everything at 1440p since the first day I installed that GPU in my system, I've been enjoying 1440p gaming/daily computer use for 11 years now) and also used it on windows up to that point. I built a new system in 2019 when it became impossible to use an Nvidia GPU past the Keppler generation on MAcOS . I had not much budget for a GPU at the time of the new build so I bought a cheap RX580 that was barely better in performance than my 6 year old Titan in most games on Windows and lasted me just a couple of years when gpus became scarce and too expensive due to Bitcoin mining and I had to settle for a RX 6600 for an upgrade to the barely passable RX580. I have now decided to abandon hackintoshing altogether since it's no longer a viable option since Apple abandon Intel CPUs so my next gpu will certainly be an Nvidia again. But AMD cards have come a long way and they are pretty good if you don't need all the bells and whistles.

 

[Dr3ams]

For the last 10 years my limit has been 550 Euros for a GPU. I don't see that changing in the future.

 

[Eximo]

I've always liked the 700/900 series reference blower. Still have my GTX980 on a shelf.

 

[thisisaname]

It is called progress and 11 years of it is a lot of time to make a lot of progress.
It is a shame the price has in recent years made that progress regressive in terms of price to performance.

 

[salgado18]

If I had one, I'd replace it *only* because of missing features not running some games. Otherwise, such an old flagship running games like an entry level card today means is still is a good card. That's why I don't like the idea of frequent upgrades seen on most reviews, in the form of "it runs today's games at 60 fps, so it's good", which means you need to upgrade in two years. Get a stronger card, slightly above what you need (a 1440p card for 1080p gaming, f.ex.), and make your money more valuable.

 

[Neilbob]

But GPUs have basically stayed on the Moore's Law curve, at least until recently. So, this would be almost like comparing a 2.53 GHz Northwood Pentium 4 against a 486DX2-66.

Yup, that 66MHz 486 would win the match-up fairly easily!

-

Okay, I am of course jesting.

It would take the 100 MHz DX4 to achieve the feat.

 

[RemmRun]

If you signed up for the $100 a year payment plan I guess it might make sense.

 

[MisterZ]

The wording here could be better: it says "DirectX 12 was released two years after the GTX Titan debuted in 2015". I read this as if the Titan was released in 2015, not DirectX 12.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

You also have to say (though you didn't) that the 2013 Titan still has relatively up to date drivers (October 2023), even though it is out of support, and can be used on Windows 11. The Radeon 200 series of the same age is not supported in Windows 11 and has had no driver update since 2022, the same goes for the Fury series released in 2015 AND the Radeon Pro Duo from 2016.

Can you imagine paying $1500 for the Radeon Pro Duo and 6 years later it is no longer supported? Actually, for professional users the last driver update was in 2021, so 5 years.

 

[d0x360]

But GPUs have basically stayed on the Moore's Law curve, at least until recently. So, this would be almost like comparing a 2.53 GHz Northwood Pentium 4 against a 486DX2-66.

The thing that's improved least is memory bandwidth (leaving aside HBM). However, bigger & faster caches have gone a long ways towards mitigating that bottleneck.

Not just memory bandwidth... IPC has significantly increased and so has instruction set so they can do more things and do them faster.

This "news" and I'm not saying it's a bad article by that. .. this news shouldn't be a shock to anyone. GPUs will pretty much always get destroyed by newer hardware because of amount of memory, IPC and instruction sets not to mention clock speed, my 4090 easily runs at 3200mhz all day @ 100% load without ever passing 66 degrees and if I could get more power through it I could go higher because there is no clock limit on the (I believe) 2000 series and above they are entirely thermal & power not core clock limited and assuming you can get enough power and cooling they remain stable well above their shipped clocks so an extra 1ghz is not out of the realm of possibilities but the issue becomes the voltage curve and finding the right values and at a certain point the law of diminishing returns kicks in because extra speed requires significant power which increases thermals exponentially

 

[derekullo]

200hp 2004 V6 Mustang also deemed slow by modern standards.

 

[stonecarver]

I bought one a few months back and I some times fool myself if I get busy what computer is on the screen hooked up to a KVM switch. I always switch to my faster gaming machine when I'm going to game.


If I'm tired or get up to get a cup of coffee and zone out and get an urge to play a game I have load up steam, Hit say Serious Sam 4 and be playing for 20 minutes before I realize I'm on the Original Titan 6 Gb card. I forgot to switch computers. Not one indications I'm on the old over the hill card.

For what it's worth she still kicks a strong life in her still.

In the story where they tested the Titan with Crysis Remastered I get better FPS than what story posted.

Tomorrow I will switch the Titan to a spare computer that has AVX instruction " Crysis 2 &3 need AVX instruction" and see how all the remastered Crysis 1,2,3 fair with the card.



I have a GTX 690 in the computer with AVX already and it just chops up the Crisis remastered releases like butter. And being as that card is an SLI dead end card the Titan should really shine.



As far as playing some of the heavy hitter demanding games of the last year or so this Titan is far from being an aged out GTX 280 that you hit the wall starting the games of today with" does not meet the minimum system requirements"

 

[scottsoapbox]

For the last 10 years my limit has been 550 Euros for a GPU. I don't see that changing in the future.

You realise 550 today is like 300 ten years ago, right?

 

[bit_user]

200hp 2004 V6 Mustang also deemed slow by modern standards.

V6 Mustangs are slow even in the year they're made! Those were never for real car enthusiasts.

 

[IronyTaken]

Out of all Nvidia gpus, the ones I got the most out of was the 8800 and 1080ti. My 1080ti is still running in an old build and it can still play modern games fine at 7 years old. The extra vRAM certainly helps. When I upgraded in 2020 I knew it was bonkers to go with a 10gb 3080 so I went with the 24gb 3090 and it has lastest much longer while my friend got rid of his 3080 ti because 12gb of vRAM is no longer enough for higher settings.

 

[DataPotato]

A German review outlet has gone back and retested Nvidia's first GTX Titan graphics card 11 years after it launched to see how its performance stacks up to entry-level GPUs in 2024.

Nvidia's original GTX Titan benchmarked 11 years later — $1,000 card now 'barely usable' in modern titles, often beaten by AMD's sub-$200 RX 6400 : Read more

I think their testing methods must have something wrong.

1. PCGH claims Doom Eternal getting 17.9 frames/second on a Titan. Not 179... less than 20. Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal famously run at over 100fps on almost anything.
2. PCGH shows Witcher 3 getting 30fps, but UserBenchmark shows multiple hits of the Titan getting ~45 fps on Witcher 3
3. UserBenchmark shows Overwatch getting 111fps on the Titan, while Overwatch 2 is curiously missing from PCGH's review.

I don't care to find more supporting benchmarks, I just think something's wrong with their testing.
I've used and seen a half-dozen 10-series cards in 5 computers and they absolutely crushed 1080p gaming (60+ fps) until Red Dead Redemption 2 had to be cut down to 30 fps to hold vsync.

 

[Order 66]

The funny thing is, this would probably still outperform my rx 550 in modern games, despite the lack of proper Directx 12 support, and recent drivers.

 

[Jtwizzle]

They messed up testing with maxxed out settings. This is a medium or lower setting gpu on more modern games. The overclocked results are impressive, though!

 

[Dr3ams]

You realise 550 today is like 300 ten years ago, right?

Exactly.

 

[94_xj]

Breaking news from Tom's hardware - computer hardware over a decade old is outdated!

Top notch, team. Top notch.