Wednesday, May 14th 2014
Drivers Holding Back GTX TITAN-Z Launch
It turns out that drivers are holding back launch of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX TITAN-Z flagship graphics card. That's not to say that drivers for the card don't exist. When tested with ones that do, performance numbers yielded by Hong Kong-based tech print magazine E-Zone, reveal that the card trades blows with AMD's R9 295X2 in too many tests to warrant double its price at $2,999; and that it's also slower in some. The only way NVIDIA can sell the GTX TITAN-Z at that price, is by either making it significantly faster, or reducing the price. It looks like NVIDIA is trying the former, and not by tinkering with hardware specifications, but drivers. NVIDIA believes it can yet salvage the $2,999 pricing of the GTX TITAN-Z, by developing drivers that make the card convincingly faster than AMD's $1,499 offering. Retailers and distributors are being told not to sell their GTX TITAN-Z inventory until NVIDIA releases these drivers. The company didn't mention a date to these retailers. Given its track-record with performance-enhancing drivers, one can give NVIDIA the benefit of doubt. It may yet prevent a "GTX TITANIC-Z" from happening.
Source:
Hermitage Akihabara
85 Comments on Drivers Holding Back GTX TITAN-Z Launch
They made it because they could.
But when you compare it to other super cars it sucks.
You cannot compare like that. Bugatti cars never loose their value after 1 or 2 years. On the contrary. Just check with Google how much a Bugatti from 1940 goes for. ;)
That's what Edward Smith taught me. Might help in this case though....
That's only partially sarcastic by the way, I've found them to be stable personally but everyone's mileage varies...
"Hell I have been using Nvidia GPUs before Gefoce, since those Riva TNT days":):)
3k is just to much for this card and it should come with Quadro drivers and software .
Of course it does depend on system configuration as the are many variables that play a role...
System configurations, like adding another card for SLI where it wasn't supported before?
Also, where is the commentary on why they didn't think of this before? Were the just lazy and not giving the best drivers they could? Did they not care about your money spent on their card enough to deliver before they were forced to?
As far as drivers go, neither side is better than the other especially now a days. I had people constantly say AMD/ATI drivers were bad in the past and heck I had even not been a big fan of the cards back then. I ended up buying a pair of HD 6990's finally to give AMD a try and have not had a problem since. Most of the problems people have with any graphics card I feel is all in their heads or just a state of mind. If you get told something is better, your more likely to believe or see something that is not there and see it being better even in situations where performance is equal. Either way, neither company has problems most of the time (Of course there are exceptions) and in all honesty any choice is good at this point.
As far as Titan-Z drivers, I highly doubt much of any increase will come from this if at all to still justify it. No matter what, at the end of the day its still just a pair of underclocked Titan Blacks in SLI.
Hell, even Dave which has always rejected to buy Nvidia, now has a Tri 780ti array.
Can't tell for R9 series but I can tell you that up to 79xx series AMD CFX was utterly broken, especially in eyefinity.