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| System Name | SnowFire / The Reinforcer |
|---|---|
| Processor | i7 10700K 5.1ghz (24/7) / 2x Xeon E52650v2 |
| Motherboard | Asus Strix Z490 / Dell Dual Socket (R720) |
| Cooling | RX 360mm + 140mm Custom Loop / Dell Stock |
| Memory | Corsair RGB 16gb DDR4 3000 CL 16 / DDR3 128gb 16 x 8gb |
| Video Card(s) | GTX Titan XP (2025mhz) / Asus GTX 950 (No Power Connector) |
| Storage | Samsung 970 1tb NVME and 2tb HDD x4 RAID 5 / 300gb x8 RAID 5 |
| Display(s) | Acer XG270HU, Samsung G7 Odyssey (1440p 240hz) |
| Case | Thermaltake Cube / Dell Poweredge R720 Rack Mount Case |
| Audio Device(s) | Realtec ALC1150 (On board) |
| Power Supply | Rosewill Lightning 1300Watt / Dell Stock 750 / Brick |
| Mouse | Logitech G5 |
| Keyboard | Logitech G19S |
| Software | Windows 11 Pro / Windows Server 2016 |
So a few friends on around the web, here, and on social media asked me about my Titan X pascal and were shocked I purchased it. Most of this stems from the fact that I have been a pretty high advocate that the Titan series of cards were overpriced cards that should not exist (That and some people saw me as an AMD fanboy for owning two generation of AMD cards even after years of mostly Nvidia cards and because I see some people overly hating AMD for the wrong reason IMHO and call them out for it). Anyway, so I decided I would post my thoughts on it seeing as how I was so against the series and what I feel like switching sides after about ~4 years of AMD as my exclusive in the desktop GPU's (bearing in mind my laptop has been Nvidia still along with side machines). So here is my thoughts coming from my 3 290X's... @GreiverBlade @the54thvoid @rtwjunkie
This is not a review, just a thoughts/opinion on the card. If you want that look at the review on this site for a much more informative review of the card. I wrote some of this kinda fast so I apologize if there are any mistakes in grammar (I will try and correct them as I read it).
I went ahead and installed the card into my machine to run some tests on it making sure it was working correctly and to stress it. After a few FireStrike extremes and a burn in test I got my first impression of the card. The card performs marvelously and gives me results that I expected after watching reviews. It performs at minimum on par with my 3 R9 290X's working together which is nothing short of fantastic in my book and a welcomed upgrade considering CFX/SLI is still hit or miss. With this card it means I don't have to worry about it at all and still get that performance I crave. I immediately pulled up MSI afterburner and GPUZ to now take a look at it while the card was running so I can understand the way Boost 3.0 is working on my specific card and what needs to be done. Watching the card in Firestrike is pretty interesting as the clocks are constantly changing at a very high rate and the temps are something else to note (I will mention that shortly). Basically my card stays above the base clock constantly while doing Firestrike yet it never stays close to the boost clock for any length of time for a multitude of reasons most of which (According to GPU-Z) is power and temp. The card during those tests gets right up to the 80's in my case which is near the throttle point for the cards temps after just a little while in Firestrike but it seems that power is the biggest issue. So I decided to do some changing to the card immediately to try and remedy this.
After downloading the newest version of MSI afterburner (Since the old version I was running was not able to make adjustments to it) I was able to make the changes to the card to see how things changed. I loaded up a custom fan profile for the card (Just making some adjustments to keep it no higher than 85c) since before I didn't even notice the cards fan at all in my system (Even with my case fans set low) and then decided to just push the power limit and temp limit to the max. Rerunning the tests yielded significantly better results flat out as the boost clock went beyond the stated boost clock into the 1800's and the I stopped seeing the Power Limit come up on the card in GPU-Z satisfying me. Funny enough I still could barely notice the GPU fan which to me shows that the card is very quiet especially compared to the turbines on the 290X's.
Playing BF4 on this cards was nothing short of stunning. Without Vsync at the exact same settings as I was playing on the 290X trio resulted in FPS staying well above 144FPS and hitting the 200FPS wall constantly. I adjust the settings another notch up on the MSAA and switched to HBAO just to knock it down a notch which still kept the FPS around 160. Once I get the Asus ROG PG279Q I bet it will be even better since I can use G-Sync with the system. I pulled up Doom which performs very well with Vulkan enabled keeping in the 100+ range with ease. Every game I play I saw nothing but great FPS from this card normally above 100 on Ultra settings at 1440p which is exactly what I was wanting in preparation for BF1.
Now though I will get to some of the downsides I feel from the card:
For starters this card is not $1200, it is $1299 once tax is factored in for U.S. people. When ordering from Nvidia's site you get that tax thrown on (Even though you also get free shipping) so it ends up at almost the $1300 dollar mark which irks me a little bit just because its almost an extra $100 bucks. Guess ordering from newegg spoiled me, but I digress since I knew what I was paying well before that point so its a minor complaint.
The cooler on this card maybe of very high quality in design and looks. Heck it is one of the quietest stock coolers I have ever used (least in the last 6 years) on a high end card and one of the best looking. But to me its a little hard to love it when I watch the card under load. I have fresh air pumping in straight to the card and its not obstructed by anything in my case yet it still revs up high. Just allowing the cards power and temp limit to the max for max clocks (Which I will count as overclocking) causes temps in the mid 80's instantly while gaming or benching. The fan on the card with my custom profile (Which basically just scales at a linear rate up to 100% at 90c) means the fans in the range of 85% - 90% at all times gaming with just those settings and still keeping in the mid 80's. I still barely notice the fan (Which is impressive) but I feel the card just runs very hot easily on this cooler which is sad considering the build quality is top notch. Even forcing the fan to 100% didn't results in the temps getting down much more than another degree or two which I found odd in my testing. I think it has to do with the way boost 3.0 acts and manages power/performance, but I still thought I would mention it. I can't really complain much because it still manages to handle my max overclock on it as well (Which with boost I have seen as high as 2025 on this card) but I just found it weird since even though the 290X cooler was obnoxious beyond 60%, every 10% results in the temps dropping quite a bit (even though at a certain point I might as well have a vacuum next to me while gaming LOL) down to the low 70's then with overclocking the mid - upper 70's.
Overclocking the card achieved (Sorta) what I wanted, a 2000+ mhz overclock on the core. However that area is not maintained for much time as the card immediately reads power and drops back to the 1900's constantly. I really wish the power limit allows for just 10%-20% more as I really believe the card would hit much higher clocks just on that alone. Once I watercool it I will make my final judgment but for now I am just a little sad as I was hoping it could maintain it a little better in that range.
Do I feel regret buying this card...No not at all as it did (for the most part) what I was expecting. I actually am very impressed by the card and happy with it. I do feel that the cooler should be better for the money since there will be no aftermarket variants (And this is being sold as the way the card was supposed to be) but it is very quiet and does its job pretty well (Though I had to edit the fan curve as I feel its WAYYY to soft at stock in all forms) so its kinda a mixed bag especially since I planned to watercool it anyways soon enough. Its a great card but even though I like it, I still feel its overpriced a little bit. Granted I intend to use it only for gaming which does subtract some of its uses, I feel the extra $200 added from the last few Titans (Plus tax) is a little extreme for the card considering its not perfect. I actually wish they had a variant with a waterblock (Like EVGA did) that was priced accordingly to not include the FE price as that would have been a cool idea (Its just going to suck taking that cooler off for a waterblock considering the way its priced your paying extra for the FE cooler). What I safely can say is that the card is worth it if you want the best of the best and nothing less. I like it because its better than my previous 3 cards combined on one single card. But that is just me. I will be grabbing a second somewhere down the line (Though I am not sure when) which will be cool to see how well it scales but I figure the G-Sync monitor is first.
This is not a review, just a thoughts/opinion on the card. If you want that look at the review on this site for a much more informative review of the card. I wrote some of this kinda fast so I apologize if there are any mistakes in grammar (I will try and correct them as I read it).
I went ahead and installed the card into my machine to run some tests on it making sure it was working correctly and to stress it. After a few FireStrike extremes and a burn in test I got my first impression of the card. The card performs marvelously and gives me results that I expected after watching reviews. It performs at minimum on par with my 3 R9 290X's working together which is nothing short of fantastic in my book and a welcomed upgrade considering CFX/SLI is still hit or miss. With this card it means I don't have to worry about it at all and still get that performance I crave. I immediately pulled up MSI afterburner and GPUZ to now take a look at it while the card was running so I can understand the way Boost 3.0 is working on my specific card and what needs to be done. Watching the card in Firestrike is pretty interesting as the clocks are constantly changing at a very high rate and the temps are something else to note (I will mention that shortly). Basically my card stays above the base clock constantly while doing Firestrike yet it never stays close to the boost clock for any length of time for a multitude of reasons most of which (According to GPU-Z) is power and temp. The card during those tests gets right up to the 80's in my case which is near the throttle point for the cards temps after just a little while in Firestrike but it seems that power is the biggest issue. So I decided to do some changing to the card immediately to try and remedy this.
After downloading the newest version of MSI afterburner (Since the old version I was running was not able to make adjustments to it) I was able to make the changes to the card to see how things changed. I loaded up a custom fan profile for the card (Just making some adjustments to keep it no higher than 85c) since before I didn't even notice the cards fan at all in my system (Even with my case fans set low) and then decided to just push the power limit and temp limit to the max. Rerunning the tests yielded significantly better results flat out as the boost clock went beyond the stated boost clock into the 1800's and the I stopped seeing the Power Limit come up on the card in GPU-Z satisfying me. Funny enough I still could barely notice the GPU fan which to me shows that the card is very quiet especially compared to the turbines on the 290X's.
Playing BF4 on this cards was nothing short of stunning. Without Vsync at the exact same settings as I was playing on the 290X trio resulted in FPS staying well above 144FPS and hitting the 200FPS wall constantly. I adjust the settings another notch up on the MSAA and switched to HBAO just to knock it down a notch which still kept the FPS around 160. Once I get the Asus ROG PG279Q I bet it will be even better since I can use G-Sync with the system. I pulled up Doom which performs very well with Vulkan enabled keeping in the 100+ range with ease. Every game I play I saw nothing but great FPS from this card normally above 100 on Ultra settings at 1440p which is exactly what I was wanting in preparation for BF1.
Now though I will get to some of the downsides I feel from the card:
For starters this card is not $1200, it is $1299 once tax is factored in for U.S. people. When ordering from Nvidia's site you get that tax thrown on (Even though you also get free shipping) so it ends up at almost the $1300 dollar mark which irks me a little bit just because its almost an extra $100 bucks. Guess ordering from newegg spoiled me, but I digress since I knew what I was paying well before that point so its a minor complaint.
The cooler on this card maybe of very high quality in design and looks. Heck it is one of the quietest stock coolers I have ever used (least in the last 6 years) on a high end card and one of the best looking. But to me its a little hard to love it when I watch the card under load. I have fresh air pumping in straight to the card and its not obstructed by anything in my case yet it still revs up high. Just allowing the cards power and temp limit to the max for max clocks (Which I will count as overclocking) causes temps in the mid 80's instantly while gaming or benching. The fan on the card with my custom profile (Which basically just scales at a linear rate up to 100% at 90c) means the fans in the range of 85% - 90% at all times gaming with just those settings and still keeping in the mid 80's. I still barely notice the fan (Which is impressive) but I feel the card just runs very hot easily on this cooler which is sad considering the build quality is top notch. Even forcing the fan to 100% didn't results in the temps getting down much more than another degree or two which I found odd in my testing. I think it has to do with the way boost 3.0 acts and manages power/performance, but I still thought I would mention it. I can't really complain much because it still manages to handle my max overclock on it as well (Which with boost I have seen as high as 2025 on this card) but I just found it weird since even though the 290X cooler was obnoxious beyond 60%, every 10% results in the temps dropping quite a bit (even though at a certain point I might as well have a vacuum next to me while gaming LOL) down to the low 70's then with overclocking the mid - upper 70's.
Overclocking the card achieved (Sorta) what I wanted, a 2000+ mhz overclock on the core. However that area is not maintained for much time as the card immediately reads power and drops back to the 1900's constantly. I really wish the power limit allows for just 10%-20% more as I really believe the card would hit much higher clocks just on that alone. Once I watercool it I will make my final judgment but for now I am just a little sad as I was hoping it could maintain it a little better in that range.
Do I feel regret buying this card...No not at all as it did (for the most part) what I was expecting. I actually am very impressed by the card and happy with it. I do feel that the cooler should be better for the money since there will be no aftermarket variants (And this is being sold as the way the card was supposed to be) but it is very quiet and does its job pretty well (Though I had to edit the fan curve as I feel its WAYYY to soft at stock in all forms) so its kinda a mixed bag especially since I planned to watercool it anyways soon enough. Its a great card but even though I like it, I still feel its overpriced a little bit. Granted I intend to use it only for gaming which does subtract some of its uses, I feel the extra $200 added from the last few Titans (Plus tax) is a little extreme for the card considering its not perfect. I actually wish they had a variant with a waterblock (Like EVGA did) that was priced accordingly to not include the FE price as that would have been a cool idea (Its just going to suck taking that cooler off for a waterblock considering the way its priced your paying extra for the FE cooler). What I safely can say is that the card is worth it if you want the best of the best and nothing less. I like it because its better than my previous 3 cards combined on one single card. But that is just me. I will be grabbing a second somewhere down the line (Though I am not sure when) which will be cool to see how well it scales but I figure the G-Sync monitor is first.
