Nvidia makes GTX Titan even faster
When the GTX 780 Ti launched, it had
an advantage in games over the GTX Titan, leaving Nvidia in the odd position of
having its flagship $1,330.24 card trumped by its own $831.40 model. The GTX
Titan Black, which outright replaces the GTX Titan, seeks to rectify this issue
by pairing a fully enabled GK110 GPU with 6GB of VRAM and full-speed
double-precision performance, and some clock speed bumps too.
Zotac GeForce GTX Titan Black
As a 7.1-billion transistor GK110
part, the GTX Titan Black has five GPCs divided into 15 SMs, and this time
around, all of them are enabled, as in the GTX 780 Ti. This leaves it with
2,880 stream processors and 240 texture units, a 6.7 per cent increase over the
original Titan. It ships with a base clock speed of 889MHz and a 980MHz boost
clock, compared to 876MHz and 928MHz in the GTX 780 Ti. Therefore, although you
can buy pre-overclocked GTX 780 Ti cards with higher frequencies, it’s now the
fastest card in Nvidia’s GeForce arsenal.
The GTX Titan Black also takes the 6GB
frame buffer from the original GTX Titan (double the capacity of the GTX 780
Ti) and pairs it with the GTX 780 Ti’s memory speed of 1.75GHz (7GHz
effective). This, along with GK110’s fat 384-bit memory bus, gives the GTX
Titan Black 336GB/sec of peak memory bandwidth – 16.7 per cent more than the
GTX Titan. The full-speed double-precision units also carry over from the
Titan.
Inside design
The card has the same gorgeous design
as before too, featuring a high-quality aluminium shroud. As with the GTX
Titan, board partners can’t use custom coolers with the GTX Titan Black, so
Zotac’s model looks the same as any other, although it includes three free
Splinter Cell games, a DVI to VGA adaptor and some power adaptors. Meanwhile,
all of the usual Nvidia features you’d expect are present, including G-Sync and
4-way SLI support. A vapour chamber and heatsink cool the GPU, while a metal
contact plate with strategically positioned thermal pads draws heat away from
the 6+2 phase power VRMs and half of the memory chips (the other half are left
uncovered on the PCB’s rear). The radial fan at the side provides airflow,
blasting out its hot air through the rear I/O plate.
Performance
The GTX Titan Black is the new
performance king, coming top in all but the Battlefield 4 benchmark at 4K. That
said, the GTX Titan Black doesn’t offer a massive benefit over the GTX 780 Ti
in games. The difference between them never exceeds 2fps, which you’re unlikely
to notice when playing.
This should come as little surprise,
as they share identical specifications where it counts, other than the GTX
Titan Black’s marginally higher clock speed. Double precision and FP64
performance is irrelevant in games, and the 6GB frame buffer does nothing for
the new card in games either – even at 5,760 x 1,080 and 4K, 3GB isn’t a
bottleneck. Even compared to the GTX Titan, meaningful differences are rare,
although technically it does achieve borderline playable status in Battlefield
4 at 4K, unlike the GTX Titan. It outperforms the R9 290X too, in particular
being noticeably smoother in the BioShock Infinite tests.
Zotac GeForce GTX Titan
The Unigine Valley rankings confirm
what we see elsewhere. The Titan Black has less than a 2 per cent lead on the
GTX 780 Ti, but is 8 and 26 per cent faster than the GTX Titan and R9 290X
respectively. As expected, power consumption is a touch higher than the GTX 780
Ti and GTX Titan, although the cooler works well, never becoming too noisy at
stock speeds.
We’ve seen good results when
overclocking GK110 parts, and the GTX Titan Black is no exception. We managed a
25 per cent core increase, reaching a base clock of 1,119MHz, giving us a boost
clock of 1,210MHz. The card sustained this frequency without issue, even
peaking occasionally at 1,262MHz. We also pushed the memory to 7.4GHz
(effective). When overclocked, power consumption is higher and the card becomes
noisier. We saw healthy gains in each of the benchmarks though - up to 18 per
cent in Battlefield 4.
Conclusion
For games, the Titan Black offers
nothing over a GTX 780 Ti. Instead, it targets professional graphics users –
Nvidia says only around half the original Titans sold were used for games. A
cheaper, pre-overclocked and custom-cooled GTX 780 Ti will outperform the Titan
Black in games too.
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Specifications
·
Graphics
processor Nvidia: GeForce GTX Titan Black, 889 MHz (boosting to 980 MHz) ·
Pipeline:
2,880 stream processors, 48 ROPs ·
Memory:
6GB GDDRS, 7GHz effective ·
Bandwidth:
336 GB/sec ·
Compatibility:
DirectX 11.2, OpenGL 4.4 ·
Outputs/
Inputs: DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI, DisplayPort ·
Power
connections: 1x6-pin, 1x8-pin, top-mounted ·
Size:
267mm long, dual-slot
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