NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN SLI & Tri-SLI

[adamisepic]

4-way

Would it be possible to run these in 4-way sli with the right motherboard

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

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?

I'm in the same boat. Obviously it is total overkill and hell, I sold my entire lga775 pc and 2x 6970's to get the funds for my 690, but simply adding another 690 would be the "cheapest" option.

I love my 120hz screen but now I'm not content unless I can pump a constant 120 frames and keep the oh so delightful buttery smoothness. I have no idea what I can sell to get another 690....Also, I'd have to watercool it as well since my case is already packed.

I don't think I'll be doing any upgrading for a while.

Edit: Unless someone wants to buy a 2000 Yamaha R6!!?

 

[micropage7]

Would it be possible to run these in 4-way sli with the right motherboard

yeah and you gonna face reality that your vga card is much powerful than your processor

 

[StefanG]

I really appreciate the amount of work you guys invested to cover all kind of configurations rather than focusing on the GTX Titan only. I haven't found any other tests with this kind of coverage so far - Awesome work!

Here are my comments based on my own experiences running GTX 690 like cooling solutions and SLI configs in the past and present:
- 3 x GTX 680 is only possible with reference cards due to the height of the cooling solution. Most of the more powerful and less noises solutions are just to high to get them running side by side (you cannot even get the cards installed). The Titan solution is actually quite good in this case.
- The GTX 690 reference cooler is keeping half of the hot air inside the case due to his design. Running two 690 actually warm up the inside of the case and all components quite heavily The problem is that a good ventilated case normally blows the cold air in direction of the video cards but this is far than optimal for a cooling solution like the one the GTX 690 is using (similar for the ATI 6990). I am using a Silverstone TJ11 and the even the manual is pointing this out.

Again, great review!
Stefan

 

[rainzor]

If i counted correctly 2 Titans outperformed 3x7970 in 12 out of 18 game tests, 4 times Radeons were faster and 2 times they were even. Also, from what i saw around the web, 2 Titans will beat 2xAresII more often then not. Fact is 3way and 4way cf/sli scaling is usually very poor and there lies some value of the Titan....

 

[Melvis]

First of all AMD needs to get the drivers sorted, most of those benchmarks have very poor scaling for the 7970...

Apart from that the Titan performs as good as what im running now, but mine cost $550 less :shadedshu

 

[THE_EGG]

First of all AMD needs to get the drivers sorted, most of those benchmarks have very poor scaling for the 7970...

Apart from that the Titan performs as good as what im running now, but mine cost $550 less :shadedshu

Keep in mind that your setup being $550 cheaper will probably end up being something like $700 or more cheaper than the Australian price of a Geforce Titan.

Way too expensive for me. Not justified yet anyway me thinks. At least not unless you have massive multi-montior setups, big resolution or until the next-gen consoles come out. But even when the next-gen consoles do come out, I think a 680 or a 7970 ghz will be more than adequate. That's my thoughts anyway. Great review as always

 

[Initialised]

3x1080p is nice and all but when are we going to start seeing 4K resolution testing in TPU reviews?

 

[BigMack70]

3x1080p is nice and all but when are we going to start seeing 4K resolution testing in TPU reviews?

Maybe when 4k monitors cost less than like 20 grand?

 

[W1zzard]

3x1080p is nice and all but when are we going to start seeing 4K resolution testing in TPU reviews?

as soon as someone sends me a 4k monitor

 

[Ikaruga]

as soon as someone sends me a 4k monitor

 

[Akrian]

Thanks Wizz for another awesome review. + Hilarious "Titan pack" picture surrounding the poor ATI chick ( not sure what's her name, Sapphire ? )

The card seems awesome. The price however just butchers it, just butchers.
I mean sure 3xTitans will win over 3x7970. Buut for twice the price 0_o. I confess if the price would've been around 600$ per card, I'd jump on the tri-sli wagon. But for 3k$ + 600$ for waterblocks, I'll pass. My 7970s+WBs cost me around 1700 total. So that's still cheaper then two titans, and higher performance too.

Waiting for the next round at the end of this year, hope to see some AMD 89xx series dropping by as well as 7xx series from Nvidia =)

 

[Qiplayer]

Overclocking

Hi everybody. I'm new here.
Last year I wasted 2000$ on 2 gtx 690, then went back on the 2 680.
Scaling was bad but had microstuttering and a general slow down of the image even with 120fps on 6000x1080p.

I think by the comparison and the though you do, you are missing the overclocking.
Not the fact that you can overclock 2 titan, but the fact that 2 gtx 680 or 2 hd7970 overclock much better than 2 gtx 690. And finally yes it would have been nice to OC all cards and see what is the performance and cost par performance comparison.
Comon nobody spends 1000 or more on gpus and doesn't overclock.

Then if you have space always go with single gpu cards. A single 690 with a slight overclock was terribly noisy and performed 85% compared to 2 gtx 680 with OC.

So for who has 3 screens the best cards are a couple of the most overclocked 7970 or 680 (by overclocked I mean like the ftw of evga. Or in this case 2 titan

 

[Ikaruga]

Hi everybody. I'm new here.
Last year I wasted 2000$ on 2 gtx 690, then went back on the 2 680.
Scaling was bad but had microstuttering and a general slow down of the image even with 120fps on 6000x1080p.

I think by the comparison and the though you do, you are missing the overclocking.
Not the fact that you can overclock 2 titan, but the fact that 2 gtx 680 or 2 hd7970 overclock much better than 2 gtx 690. And finally yes it would have been nice to OC all cards and see what is the performance and cost par performance comparison.
Comon nobody spends 1000 or more on gpus and doesn't overclock.

Then if you have space always go with single gpu cards. A single 690 with a slight overclock was terribly noisy and performed 85% compared to 2 gtx 680 with OC.

So for who has 3 screens the best cards are a couple of the most overclocked 7970 or 680 (by overclocked I mean like the ftw of evga. Or in this case 2 titan

Hi and welcome to the forum. Please note that W1zzard did OC the card in the single-card review, and it's highly likely that he will also review several other custom built factory OC-ed Titans in the future.

edit.: btw W1zzard, may I ask: did you rerun the BF3 test with the voltage OC too, and if yes, how much more fps did you get?

 

[Darkrealms]

Thanks for another thorough and well thought out review.

Any idea how many reviewers Nvidia sent the 3-SLI setup to?

So this being the GK110 vs the GK104 does it have better crunching performance? Or is that the difference between the "GK" and the "K" (Tesla) architectures?

 

[radrok]

Man that SLI performance is tasty :O

So basically a SLI or even Tri-SLI of these beasts is the highest peak of performance we are going to see from GPUs in these 2 years, right?
Cause the GTX 780 will probably be a GK114 which AFAIK should be slower than GK110, I'm purely speculating on the older architecture where GF110 > GF114.

 

[Prima.Vera]

WOW, ATI's crossfire sucks in so many games. I thought is only me with my 5870/5850 that is having problem, but as far as I can see half of the tested games have really big problems with Crossfire/SLI

 

[FreedomEclipse]

WOW, ATI's crossfire sucks in so many games

Its their drivers, their cards are great though 7970 is an awesome card but drivers for crossfire are just poopoo.

 

[Nirutbs]

Nice thanks ..680 is enough for me now. Titan is too high.

 

[15th Warlock]

Hello W1zzard, I really hope you read this, once again, thank you for your thorough review, I know this might be too much to ask for, but I would really appreciate if you can give us an update on the Titan SLI performance for Crysis 3, as of this moment no other game requires more GPU muscle, specially when running maxed out in multiple monitor setups.

Looking forward to an update, thank you very much in advance.

 

[Kronvict]

Thanks Wizz for another awesome review. + Hilarious "Titan pack" picture surrounding the poor ATI chick ( not sure what's her name, Sapphire ? )

The card seems awesome. The price however just butchers it, just butchers.
I mean sure 3xTitans will win over 3x7970. Buut for twice the price 0_o. I confess if the price would've been around 600$ per card, I'd jump on the tri-sli wagon. But for 3k$ + 600$ for waterblocks, I'll pass. My 7970s+WBs cost me around 1700 total. So that's still cheaper then two titans, and higher performance too.

Waiting for the next round at the end of this year, hope to see some AMD 89xx series dropping by as well as 7xx series from Nvidia =)

Agreed. I was planning on buying The GTX Titan but then they released with a $999 Price tag per GPU, i couldn't justify the price imo. The price itself killed my willingness to get one regardless of how awesome it is so i just ordered two GTX 680s for a sli config. After seeing the performance of GTX 680 SLi vs a single titan i'm glad i did.

 

[Laki747]

Hi,

I am not an expert or anything like that but i have one thing that is making me confused

How come that in almost all tests 1xGTX 690 had better results in all resolutions then 2xGTX 690?? Could some 1 plz explain that to me?

 

[Mixedjams]

Agreed. I was planning on buying The GTX Titan but then they released with a $999 Price tag per GPU, i couldn't justify the price imo. The price itself killed my willingness to get one regardless of how awesome it is so i just ordered two GTX 680s for a sli config. After seeing the performance of GTX 680 SLi vs a single titan i'm glad i did.

Hey good for you man enjoy those lovely cards! I will be looking to pick up two 680s also I was really considering 2 7950s but after looking at how poorly the 7970s did in some games really turned me off to the idea. I will be picking up a 2560x1440p 120hz monitor and I can't be playing at those frame rates even though the AMD Never Settle Bundle is spectacular, I need to have the ease of mind knowing I'm not going to be getting 20-30fps while playing certain games, really disappointed in AMD after reading the review.

 

[Initialised]

as soon as someone sends me a 4k monitor

Was looking at a 84" £22k is a bit steep. So far only seen 4K data on BSN.

 

[Antjel]

Just my experience

Hey guys thought I would share my experience for those thinking about choosing a 690 over a Titan.

I have 2x690GTX in Quad SLI and unfortunately I rarely get to use them because quad sli driver are horrible and not just on the diminishing return on performance but flat out unusable. When running in Quad SLI I only have 1 game that does not crash (Batman Arkham City) after just a few minutes of play. I spent months troubleshooting and even RMA'd both of my 690's only to find out when running in Quad if you aren't benchmarking it's really not worth doing it. I game mostly with just 1 690 now (absolutely no crashes and settings on ultimate) and turn one of them off. If you google the 690 enough you will find most people have turned off their quad sli and are waiting again for new drivers with some hope they didn't get totally con'd into the quad sli hype.

This is my take and my lessons learned:
Games and drivers are built and primarily tested on the largest population.

• Single Card
• 2 x SLI

So my lessons learned is if I want to actually use the hardware I paid for then get hardware that is going to work with the majority of applications I want to use.

So this is why I see value in the Titan. The Titan not only has enough vram to run the surround gaming I want but also has the performance similar to a 690 with a single GPU so you can comfortable go to 2 x SLI before experiencing the lack of driver support in a 3x 4x SLI configuration.

I will never attempt greater than 2xSLI again it's too costly and has caused way too much of a headache.

Now will I replace my 690's with Titan's?...probably not that is too much of an investment but when it does come time to upgrade again my strategy will be different.

Lastly,
I am not in any way bashing the 690, it is an amazing card and by itself crushes all games I have tried on ultra settings on a single monitor. I just don't recommend getting it if you have a dream of going quad sli with it down the road.

Cheers,
Antjel