On paper, the Titan X’s new GM200 GPU is 50 per cent faster than the GTX 980’s GM204. It is a 28nm part with a 601mm2die size and a massive 8 billion transistors. GM200 is still divided into graphics processing clusters (GPCs) with four Streaming Multiprocessors (SMMs) apiece, and each of these SMMs again has 128 stream processors. However, while GTX 980 had four GPCs, the Titan X adds another two, both of which are fully enabled. This takes the number of stream processors to 3,072 and the texture units to 192. Clock speeds are a little lower, but with the base clock at 1GHz and the rated boost clock at 1,075MHz, there’s a lot of potential.
There are six memory controllers too – a 50 per cent increase over the GTX 980, making for a fat 384-bit interface. With Maxwell, memory controllers are tied to ROP and L2 cache partitions, so the number of ROPs has increased from 64 to 96, and the L2 cache from 2MB to 3MB. Nvidia has also equipped the Titan X with 12GB of VRAM, enough to deal with 4K gaming and high-resolution textures. Once again, the memory is clocked at 7GHz, giving the Titan X a total memory bandwidth of 336GB/sec.
There are six memory controllers too – a 50 per cent increase over the GTX 980, making for a fat 384-bit interface. With Maxwell, memory controllers are tied to ROP and L2 cache partitions, so the number of ROPs has increased from 64 to 96, and the L2 cache from 2MB to 3MB. Nvidia has also equipped the Titan X with 12GB of VRAM, enough to deal with 4K gaming and high-resolution textures. Once again, the memory is clocked at 7GHz, giving the Titan X a total memory bandwidth of 336GB/sec.
The Titan X supports DirectX 12, as well as Nvidia’s latest visual and virtual reality technologies. However, it doesn’t have unlocked double-precision compute performance like previous Titan cards; instead, it’s locked at the driver level, as with the GTX 980. Titan cards have always been adrift from the typical price-performance curve, partly because they unlocked double-precision performance for workstation users. Now, however, the price is the same but the Titan is purely for gaming, with Nvidia directing customers to its Quadro products for compute purposes. The Titan X also lacks Nvidia’s latest display engine, so it doesn’t offer hardware-based H.265 decoding like the GTX 960, which is more suitable for HTPC use. The card will only be sold with the reference heatsink, although third-party waterblocks are available. Once again, there’s an anodised aluminium covering, this time mostly black, with a green, backlit GeForce logo on top. There’s no backplate, so no direct cooling for the rear memory chips, but the other components well covered. The GPU is cooled by a copp vapour chamber while the remaining mem chips and the MOSFETs of the 6+2 power phases are cooled by a metal contact plat is all connected to a large aluminium heat with a single fan that exhausts most of its heat through the rear I/O panel. Elsewhere, it’s business as usual. The 6-pin/8-pin PCI-E power combination is same as the original Titan; both cards hav 250W TDP.
SPECIFICATIONS
Graphics processor Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X, 1,000MHz (boost 1,075MHz) Pipeline 3,072 stream processors, 96 ROPs
Memory 12GB GDDR5, 7GHz effective
Bandwidth 336GB/sec
Compatibility DirectX 12, OpenGL 4.5
Outputs/inputs 3 x DisplayPort, Dual-link DVI-I, HDMI
Power connections 1 x 8-pin, 1 x 6-pin, top-mounted Size 267mm long, dual-slot GRAPHICS CARD
Meanwhile, 4-way SLI is poss with the dual SLI connectors, and the modernised set of video outputs includes support for up to 5K resolutions and up to four 4K panels. Finally, Nvidia says the GTX Titan X is a better overclocker than the original Titan, thanks to a higher maximum power target and improved VRM circuitry and components.
Performance
The GTX Titan X clearly asserts itself as the new fastest single GPU card. Going by minimum frame rates, it leads the GTX 980 by 37 per cent across our games, and the R9 290X, AMD’s current champion, by a massive 47 per cent. Even pairing two of AMD’s fastest GPUs together in the R9 295X2 doesn’t leave the red team that far ahead in many cases. At 2,560 x 1,440, the Titan X dominates, cruising at over 60fps in all games except Crysis 3, where it isn’t far off at 57fps. As such, it offers a noticeably smoother experience at this resolution than any other single-GPU card. The R9 295X2 is generally quicker, (just) managing a minimum of over 60fps in Crysis 3, but conversely, its minimum frame rate is only 56fps in Shadow of Mordor compared to 68fps for the Titan X, despite its 3fps higher average, showing the inconsistencies multi-GPU users still face. At 4K, the Titan X is finally the first single-GPU card to meet the technically playable frame rate target of 25fps minimum in every test. In fact, in every game but Crysis 3, its minimum is comfortably above 30fps too. The power figures are fantastic too; the massive gap of r s are per mory te. This tsink, the ve a sible almost 300WbetweentheR9295X2 andTitan X demonstrates Maxwell’s efficiency yet again.
It cons little more than the Sapphire R9 290X we tested, bu seen reference R9 290X cards consume even more than the Titan X. With regards to noise, the reference under load is clearly audible but not loud or intrusive Through overclocking, we managed to overclock clock to 1,192MHz, where it boosted to between 1,34 and 1,366MHz under sustained load. The memory w stable all the way up to 2GHz (8GHz effective). Thes settings gave us a performance boost of between 14 per cent in most cases, although the minimum in Cry jumped to a much smoother 33fps at 4K. The fan speed also increased slightly – again, not quite to intrusive levels, but enough that we’d rather water-cool the card to get the most benefit from overclocking.
Conclusion
The GTX Titan X reasserts Nvidia’s current dominance when it comes to performance and efficiency. It’s certainly cheeky to charge the same price as the original Titan without offering unlocked compute performance, and you can gain more performance with a significantly cheaper CrossFire or SLI setup. However, for single GPU-performance, which is the only realistic option in some smaller systems, the Titan X is entirely without competition.
