GTX 690 vs GTX Titan

[boxleitnerb]

Overclocking memory on Titan is deceptive. You can run a massive overclock and pass a lot of tests then find one where it fails quickly with that overclock and much lower ones.

Far Cry 3 tends to be one of the best games for exposing bad memory overclocks.

So true! I had to go to 350 from 500 and maybe even that isn't completely stable.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Single GPU any day.

 

[Lepton87]

Yeah, I can't overclock my memory at all. If I start Crysis 3 with any overclock (I've tried 30, 60, 100 MHz), the game just flat out crashes trying to load a level, but runs perfectly fine otherwise. I can overclock up to 50MHz on 3dmark13 without it crashing, at 60MHz it does like half of Firestrike then the test fails.

Some people seem to have a lot more success with memory, but as far as I can tell Titan isn't memory starved so you probably won't even see 1 fps increase in performance unless you do at least 500MHz mem OC.

Are you sure Titan isn't memory starved?
That's strange because GTX680 is massively memory starved. Titan has 75% more shader cores but only 50% more bandwidth. Shading performance is also up by a good 60%. Anand says

On paper, compared to GTX 680, Titan offers anywhere between a 25% and 50% increase in resource. At the starting end, Titan comes with 25% more ROP throughput, a combination of Titan’s 50% increase in ROP count and simultaneous decrease in clockspeeds relative to GTX 680.

But that's not true, he calculates this with 858MHz clock speed for Titan and 1058MHz for 680 but that is not what happens in games.
In games titan operates at close to 1GHz and GTX 680 anywhere from 1058 to 1150MHz depending on the sample. Most cards boost to 1110MHz at most, so we're looking at only 10% advantage in clock-speed for 680 over Titan. So ROP throughput is more than 25% greater, at least 35%. It really depends on the sample of 680. You can have more than 7% variance in performance in extreme cases on stock 680. I don't like that you can have this big differences in performance for allegedly the same cards, but in a nutshell that's factory OC. So theoretically it should be memory starved. Maybe they somehow improved memory controller so it gets better utilization from the same amount of theoretical bandwidth in the same way that Intel CPUs get better bandwidth numbers than AMD CPUs with the exact same memory. Was the kepler architecture improved in GK110 over GK104? Aside from those obvious compute oriented features such as Hyper-Q or Dynamic Parallelism.

 

[Fx1]

I wouldnt buy either.

Titan is a rip off

690 has a zimmer frame

If the 780 GTX brings Titan like performance for $5xx then ill be rocking 2 of those next unless AMD pulls a miracle out the bag before 20nm

 

[AMD64Blondie]

Titan all the way.

I had a 4870 X2 back in 2009,and while it was fast for its time..the dual-GPU
design was annoying to deal with.

I think that would hold true for the GTX690 today.

 

[xeledon20005]

Titan. More memory, single GPU, lower power requirements, better compute. 690 may be slightly faster, but I feel Nvidia may be able to optimize the drivers a little more for the Titan.

Agree with this, vote titan

 

[Cloudfire777]

GTX 690 is roughly 10% faster than a Titan but offer an outstanding smooth gameplay. Because of that, many sold their 690s and bought a Titan instead

 

[Black Octagon]

Titan, but only because the OP implies that this decision should not be based on price

 

[exar333]

Titan.

You can always add another one and get a lot better scaling than 2 x 690s...

 

[guskline]

Why Titan instead of GTX690?

The "sound" of the GPU name .

TITAN=:twisted::awe::biggrin:

GTX690=:hmm::|

 

[DooKey]

In Tom Cruise voice from Risky Business, "Titan, there is no substitue."

 

[Lepton87]

Titan.

You can always add another one and get a lot better scaling than 2 x 690s...

That argument was clearly stated in the opening post to not be taken into account when choosing which card you prefer.

 

[Lepton87]

Titan, but only because the OP implies that this decision should not be based on price

They are priced very close, the cheapest GTX690 is just 8%* cheaper then the cheapest Titan, right before Titans launch there were some GTX690 which were 20%* cheaper, but they disappeared with NDA lift. How much cheaper can 690 be when we are talking about new cards.

*Prices taken from Poland.

 

[Black Octagon]

Not price per card. Price per thingamijig of performance

 

[cmdrdredd]

Titan with a mod bios.

I don't want to pay $1000 and life with problems like missing profiles, bad profiles, less than 100% scaling, more input lag and microstuttering.

Well, I'll be honest here...profiles are always fixed. Either by the community and you add it manually or by Nvidia themselves. On major releases anyway. The rest...well, the point is well taken but has anyone measured the input lag with SLI vs single card? I don't have the equipment to do it but I'd love to see a test for this.

That said, get a titan then grab a second one in 6 months.

 

[sontin]

You cannot fix every profile. Not every game is playable with AFR. They can have less than 100% scaling or showing graphic glitches.

 

[Lepton87]

That said, get a titan then grab a second one in 6 months.

What makes you think it will be substantially cheaper in 6 months? The price of GTX680 almost hasn't moved at all since release and that is over ONE YEAR ago if memory serves me correctly. If it will be just 100$ cheaper in six months then it doesn't make sense to wait, better do it now and enjoy the performance much longer. I think it makes sense if it will be 600$ in 6 months.

 

[cmdrdredd]

You cannot fix every profile. Not every game is playable with AFR. They can have less than 100% scaling or showing graphic glitches.

When Sleeping Dogs had horrible scaling and low GPU usage, the user community found the proper SLI bits to add in for 98-99% usage. Later, Nvidia added in that same SLI compatibility bit to the drivers.

That's just one example. I cannot think of a major release that had broken SLI besides that one. RAGE doesn't count as you could run one GTX 270 maxed out and lock to 60fps 100% of the time.

 

[cmdrdredd]

What makes you think it will be substantially cheaper in 6 months? The price of GTX680 almost hasn't moved at all since release and that is over ONE YEAR ago if memory serves me correctly. If it will be just 100$ cheaper in six months then it doesn't make sense to wait, better do it now and enjoy the performance much longer. I think it makes sense if it will be 600$ in 6 months.

Rumor has it there will be new Titan versions rolling out. A Titan Ultra and a Titan LE. If this holds true, it will drop from current pricing.

In the meantime you don't lose much speed over a 690, gain smoother frame latency, lower heat, lower power usage, GPU Boost 2.0, & better Compute (if it matters).

 

[Lepton87]

You cannot fix every profile. Not every game is playable with AFR. They can have less than 100% scaling or showing graphic glitches.

100% scaling is extremely rare, anything above 90% is considered very good scaling. Hell, 80% is very decent. Over large set of games it scales worse then that. Here the scaling is 60% over GTX 680 and 73% over GTX 670. The real scaling is somewhere in between although closer to GTX 680. I would bet it's about 65%. It performs somewhat worse than 680SLI but better than 670SLI and then you have to deal with sample variance. Some GTX680 boosts higher then others, in extreme cases you can have two identical cards separated by 7% performance difference based on just sample variance.

 

[blackened23]

Personally, I vote 690 because nvidia's SLi is excellent. I really feel like the multi GPU issues mentioned are overstated - the 690 has frame metering and is very, very smooth. Case in point, you can look at frametime comparisons between the Titan and the GTX 690 at various websites including PCPer. Aside from a couple of outliers, the 690 is always equal or better. I think I only saw 2 frametime graphs with direct comparisons that was worse on 690, out of many benchmarks.

If it were AMD, I would understand opting for a single GPU - that way you wouldn't need to deal with framerate caps and 3rd party software to make it smooth. Nvidia's SLI and frame metering is just really good, and the performance advantage of 680 sli or the 690 would be better, IMO

 

[alcoholbob]

When Sleeping Dogs had horrible scaling and low GPU usage, the user community found the proper SLI bits to add in for 98-99% usage. Later, Nvidia added in that same SLI compatibility bit to the drivers.

That's just one example. I cannot think of a major release that had broken SLI besides that one. RAGE doesn't count as you could run one GTX 270 maxed out and lock to 60fps 100% of the time.

MultiGPU didn't work at all at release with Witcher 2.

 

[cmdrdredd]

MultiGPU didn't work at all at release with Witcher 2.

Was it a game engine issue or driver issue? I can google it and find fixes dated for 5/20/11. The game released 5/17/11. So 3 days after release, the user community found the SLI bits to fix SLI (not necessarily crossfire).

 

[blackened23]

MultiGPU didn't work at all at release with Witcher 2.

Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure it did since Witcher 2 was a TWIMTBP title.

 

[Cloudfire777]