NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN SLI & Tri-SLI

[W1zzard]

We compare one, two, and three GeForce TITAN cards in our multi-GPU comparison on X79. The cards will have to fight against three HD 7970 GHz Editions, two GTX 690s, and three GTX 680s to settle the argument: what is the fastest graphics solution you can buy today?

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[BigMack70]

Very helpful data! Basically confirms what I was thinking... if you have the cash for multiple Titan cards, you're in for a treat. Otherwise, so long as the games you play work with SLI/CF, a pair of 680s or 7970s are both substantially faster than a Titan card and also leave you with an extra $100-200 in the bank comparatively.

I wish I had a spare 3 grand sitting in my bank account right now

By the way I disagree that you need an x79 SB-E platform for this. An overclocked 3570k or 3770k will do just fine.

 

[W1zzard]

By the way I disagree that you need an x79 SB-E platform for this. An overclocked 3570k or 3770k will do just fine.

Ya, that's a good point. If you can find a board with 3x x8 PCIe 3.0 and proper slot spacing it should be fine, thanks to doubled bandwidth from 3.0. this config is only available with PLX PCIe bridge

 

[BigMack70]

Ya, that's a good point. If you can find a board with 3x x8 PCIe 3.0 and proper slot spacing it should be fine, thanks to doubled bandwidth from 3.0. this config is only available with PLX PCIe bridge

Yeah so you'll still wind up forking over a similar amount of cash (probably in the $300 range) for the motherboard, but you can save on the CPU, relatively speaking.

By the way - any chance of updating this with the Crysis 3 performance numbers Titan SLI configs produce? I'm dying to see what SLI or tri-SLI Titan cards can do in that game.

 

[W1zzard]

By the way - any chance of updating this with the Crysis 3 performance numbers Titan SLI configs produce? I'm dying to see what SLI or tri-SLI Titan cards can do in that game.

i've been thinking about doing a crysis 3 performance analysis. but gay origin doesn't let me preload yet and i have 2.5 mbit dsl .. do the math when i'll be finished downloading

 

[TaHoward]

Well now I'm really torn... I 'd like to up my system performance for 5760x1080 but it seems the 690 and Titan trade blows in 2x Sli. It'd be a lot easier for me to just grab another 690 than trying for 2 titans and selling my current 690.

Besides raw frame rates what did you feel to be the smoothest experience at that resolution between the 2 Titans and 690's?

 

[MT Alex]

The intro page photos are priceless

 

[Bjorn_Of_Iceland]

 

[chinmi]

totally gonna need this to play all current game at max settings @ 1080p....

naahhh... just kidding... my 6990 is stil adequate... lol....

 

[cadaveca]

i've been thinking about doing a crysis 3 performance analysis. but gay origin doesn't let me preload yet and i have 2.5 mbit dsl .. do the math when i'll be finished downloading

By that time, you could have shipped me the cards to play with, and I could ship them back.




SLI results are pretty good, but clearly triple-card needs some work. 2x Titan coming close to 3x 7970 is damn nice, and power consumption should be far better. I need to sell my AMD cards. Oh wait. $2000 for two cards....man...

 

[nickbaldwin86]

so the Titan is a flop.... sorry but $500 more to play on a few more frames?

if you have $1000 then buy a 690 and have a better card.

I know the name Titan is cool and all but only the suckers will pay $500 more to play a few frames higher and be able to tell their friends (geek voice on) "I got a TITAN in my computer" (geek voice off)

Personally would rather have 2x 690s and have a faster system with fewer cards.

 

[Frick]

It's only with triple-monitor 5760x1080 setups where the 3-way SLI setup gives you a performance cushion that ensures frame-rates don't drop below a playable threshold.

Depending on what you play. Performance in some games really is all over the place. I'm not sure I want to call triple-monitor SLI gaming working at all. It really is all over the place.

 

[redeye]

i've been thinking about doing a crysis 3 performance analysis. but gay origin doesn't let me preload yet and i have 2.5 mbit dsl .. do the math when i'll be finished downloading

odd, bought the digital deluxe , sunday February 17, and preloaded before it was released...) perhaps my location of missisauga, ontario , canada was a factor in my being able to preload it..

the FXAA anti-aliasing is amazing...

in the game if you shoot the "cell" banners hanging on the railings... the "hole" flickers (not because of FXAA) but because if the "rigged" nature of that effect...


BTW, is the Ruby Figurine (featured on the front page) an AMD exclusive tchotchke?... i don't collect them... but it is an awesome figurine!.

 

[iO]

No wonder you can´t buy the card when most reviewers get 3 cards for SLI setups...

 

[yogurt_21]

based on the numbers, 3 way anything scales terribly. 2 way seems to be the way to go.

So in that sense if you're planning on buy one now, sli later the titan makes more sense than the 690 as quad sli scaling is terrible and not always present (leaving you at slightly less than a single 680) Also if you happen to be sitting on a 2k gpu budget. Dual titans make more sense.

To me thought I just can't understand what NV is thinking, the enthusiast pc market is thin enough, why limit yourself to less than a % of it?

I really can't see a 500$ solution based on a cut down titan beating the 680 or 7970GHZ edition for instance. Not without seriously threatening the titan in a similarly priced scenario.

Not to mention the majority of the market seems to be leaving the desktop behind (primarily because they can get everything they want in a mobile solution for cheaper than a single enthusiast component such as cpu, mobo, gpu, etc)

maybe this'll be a gpu compute king?

 

[murk00]

Should I Switch to Titans from my system?

I set out to build a system that would play either 5760x1080 or 7680*1440.

My system

Power Supply - Dual 1200 Watt Corsair

Motherboard - Asus Maximus V Extreme

CPU - Core i7 3770k Ivy Bridge

RAM - GSkill 2400 16 gigs

Hard Drive - Intel 520 240gb SSD

Video Card - Right now I have two GTX 680 Classifieds, held off on purchasing another 2 until I got my Hydro Copper Blocks with backplates in.

My Problem on what to do now. So I have my backplates coming in, and just got my 4 Hydro blocks for the 680s.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My Confusion starts with the review of the Titans test bed, they stated this:

"The Intel Core i7 "Ivy Bridge" test-bed we normally use for our graphics card reviews won't do justice to 3-way configurations, so we set up a new Intel Core i7 "Sandy Bridge-E" test-bed running an Intel X79 chipset motherboard, which gives each of the three cards a PCI-Express x16 connection of its own. All other data-points in this review were measured on the same test bed."

I bought the Ivy Bridge setup thinking that with PCI 3.0 that it would not limit my video cards. That being said do I need to switch to x79 to take advantage of my videocards full potential since Im doing very high resolutions. I was on the understanding that x8 on 3.0 was more bandwidth than x16 on 2.0.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also another questions with my current setup would I have been better off then going with x79 than Ivy Bridge even if I dont buy the Titans? I am very confused on what to do at this point lol, and any help to fill in the gaps would be appreciated. I want to limit all bottlenecks.

I have not purchased my water cooling yet becuase I have been waiting on these damn backplates to come in for my waterblocks, but If I need to cut my losses and sell a few things now or whatever is what I am trying to figure out.


One thing to note is don't take in to account money because at this point whats a little more once you spend this much.

This system will be used to play FPS pretty much mainly ( Planetside 2 to be exact and Battlefield 3)

Anyhelp would be appreicated, thanks guys !!

 

[BigMack70]

x8 on 3.0 is the same as x16 on 2.0 and is plenty

Almost any Z77 is fine for two Titan cards. For 3 Titan cards you'd probably want a Z77 motherboard that has a PLX chip as Wizz mentioned above, so that you can run all 3 cards at PCI-e 3.0 x8.

 

[murk00]

Thanks for responding so quickly I missed the whole part he mentioned about PLX

 

[MxPhenom 216]

so the Titan is a flop.... sorry but $500 more to play on a few more frames?

if you have $1000 then buy a 690 and have a better card.

I know the name Titan is cool and all but only the suckers will pay $500 more to play a few frames higher and be able to tell their friends (geek voice on) "I got a TITAN in my computer" (geek voice off)

Personally would rather have 2x 690s and have a faster system with fewer cards.

maybe a flop to anyone that was expecting better. Performing nearly 30% better, and consuming less pwer then the current single GPU top dog the 7970, IMO is far from a flop, regardless of price.

(I would buy it if it was around $699.)

 

[W1zzard]

BTW, is the Ruby Figurine (featured on the front page) an AMD exclusive tchotchke?... i don't collect them... but it is an awesome figurine!.

i got it at some ati event many years ago. you can find some on ebay (not the exact one i have though)

Thanks for responding so quickly, my Z77 does have the PLX chip since I have the Asus Maximus V Extreme so I should be good then>???

yes

Almost any Z77 is fine for two Titan cards. For 3 Titan cards you'd probably want a Z77 motherboard that has a PLX chip as Wizz mentioned above, so that you can run all 3 cards at PCI-e 3.0 x8.

that exactly

 

[Delta6326]

Fantastic review W1zz!!!
W1zz what do you plan on doing with these cards? do you have to send them to other reviewers?

I also have a Ruby Figurine still sitting in it's box.

Can you say EPeen

 

[el fore]

reply

Both apparatus and bustle (by the news) for less performance than expected, so expensive and is overcome by the GTX 690 for the same price or even cheaper is.

Not only wait 700 series for compliance with expectations.

Note: I am using google translate

 

[15th Warlock]

Thanks for the review W1zz

In my case I have rigs that run on both ends of the spectrum, one connected to a 3D 1080p TV and the other to a surround 3D 5760x1080 setup.

I had a quad sli 680 powering the 5760 setup, discovered it was overkill, decided to go dual sli, on both rigs and have been happy ever since.

Now I have balanced both rigs, as I play mostly on my den, the lure of the surround monitors has waned after a while, and I rather play in my couch

The point I'm getting to is, I've found sli 680s to be plenty enough to power even the most demanding games, even though Titan seems tempting, I'm not willing to drop $2K to improve any of my setups for a measly gain in performance, dual 680s (or 7970s for that matter) rip through even the most demanding games in my own experience.

Nvidia should've priced this card at 899 or even 799, as no single gpu card has even closely been priced this expensively, this sets a dangerous precedent.

The way I see, only very few ppl would really benefit from this card, and it's potential from a "cheap" compute gpu point of view is awesome, but IMHO nvidia has priced this card in the wrong bracket.

Don't get me wrong though, I love the performance the amount of onboard memory, the awesome look, the scaling, but in only very few cases this card justifies the price against a 690 or hypothetical 7990, nvidia is making a killer profit with this card, not that they are inherently evil for doing so (I'm looking at you Apple)

If they release a 3GB version for 799 or 849, that would be a completely different story, and I could justify purchasing a couple of these babies but guessing how limited the yields on good GK110 must be, I guess that's not happening any time soon, shame, but I can wait for the 700 series.

 

[The Von Matrices]

I'm still completely confused at the performance/dollar chart. I can't reason why the results say that the GTX 680 3-way SLI has a lower price/performance than the GTX 690 quad SLI, even though at 5760x1080 the GTX 690 quad SLI performs 3% better than the GTX 680 3-way SLI for a >33% increase in price.

 

[EarthDog]

Ya, that's a good point. If you can find a board with 3x x8 PCIe 3.0 and proper slot spacing it should be fine, thanks to doubled bandwidth from 3.0. this config is only available with PLX PCIe bridge

I would love to see this card tested with pcie scaling... as well as the 7990 and 690.