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
I never played games on an 7XXX series because I never bought any of them for myself so I can't judge on that other than seeing others (Including a friend who had a tri-fire 7950 setup in eyefinity that works just fine).
My R9 290X cards have had 0 issues other than a problem with BF4 Mantle which was BF4's fault.
As far as ive used, besides a few games missing drivers for CFX, I have never had an issue with an AMD card CFX setup. Same of course I can say with Nvidia products and I would have had GTX 590's had it not been for newegg messing up my order.
As far as people having issues with drivers in general. There is also more tolerance given if we "like" something, and less if we are apprehensive to begin with. When I read where people say something like, "I knew I never should have bought (insert brand). I owned one in 1994 and they were crap then. They've always been crap." I agree with them, they never should have bought it. The other side is if someone likes a brand or product they are often willing to overlook subtle flaws. When I was a kid my dad owned an XK-E roadster. He loved that car. It didn;t matter that it leaked oil a bit and you had to dismantle and clean and sync the carbs every couple of weeks, he loved it anyway.
you will find people saying I have xxxx motherboard, xxxx cpu, and xxx gpu, and I am getting errors in games xxx and xxx I had to rollback my drivers, but another person who has the same xxxx motherboard, xxxx cpu, and xxx gpu says "installed with not problems", this means what AMD/NVIDIA show the maximum theoretical performance that can be gained.
its like Wi-Fi speed never expect exactly 350Mbps ;)
PC Perspective got burned by just that. One of there podcast the guys were making fun of Ryan for believing Nvidia marketing of the DX11 optimize driver.
In other gaming topics, there are reports you killed or delayed Titan Z, your new high-end GPU.
Huang: No, no, that's silliness.
So it's still on time?
Huang: Yeah.
$3,000 is a lot of money for a GPU. What do you do to make sure that for someone who buys it, it's not irrelevant two or three years down the road?
Huang: In fact, most of the customers that buy Titan Zs buy it every year.
Do you anticipate that happening even with the $3,000 pricing?
Huang: Yeah. And the reason for that is the people who buy Titans and Titan Zs have an insatiable need for computing capability, graphics computing capability. So either they got tired of using just a 1,080p monitor and they just bought a 4K. My Titan all of a sudden's not enough. For a 4K monitor, a $3,000 to $5,000 monitor, I need something bigger to drive it. So that's Titan Z.
He does understand his market though. The people who buy Titan and Titan-Z don't hold onto their cards for years (for the most part). They are like iPhones, as soon as a new one is out they have to have it.
The $3000 to $5000 4K monitors must be the ones he's planning on adding Gsync too and charging double for. :D
Also, too bad for him that his cards aren't the best for these ultra hires monitors.
/rant.
Sorry, I find his attitude really annoying. Can't argue with his ability to market his product, his company, and himself, though.
I am that Jen-Hsun Huang is aware that the price tag is too much.
This makes me think Nvidia went into pharmaceuticals and Jen-Hsun Huang is self testing.