$3000 GeForce GTX TITAN Z Tested, Less Performance Than $1500 R9 295X2 151
Vigile writes: NVIDIA announced its latest dual-GPU flagship card, the GeForce GTX Titan Z, at the GPU Technology Conference in late March with a staggering price point of $2999. Since that time, AMD announced and released the Radeon R9 295X2, its own dual-GPU card with a price tag of $1499. PC Perspective finally put the GTX Titan Z to the test and found that from a PC gamer's view, the card is way overpriced for the performance it offers. At both 2560x1440 and 3840x2160 (4K), the R9 295X2 offered higher and more consistent frame rates, sometimes by as much as 30%. The AMD card also only takes up two slots (though it does have a water cooling radiator to worry about) while the NVIDIA GTX Titan Z is a three-slot design. The Titan Z is quieter and uses much less power, but gamers considering a $1500 or $3000 graphics card selection are likely not overly concerned with power efficiency.
Wrong premise (Score:5, Insightful)
These cards should have been tested from the perspective of high performance computing or scientific application.
Quiet is important (Score:5, Insightful)
don't underestimate the beauty of a quiet powerful computer.
I won't buy a $3000 gpu anymore than I'll buy a $1500 one, but I did buy the GTX 780 over the cheaper but somewhat more powerful R9 250 solely on the basis of it being cooler.
Re:Wrong premise (Score:5, Insightful)
These cards should have been tested from the perspective of high performance computing or scientific application.
I don't think nVidia would want that.
Wrong tests (Score:5, Insightful)
The Titan shouldn't be considered a top-end gaming card. It should be treated as a budget Tesla card - even at $3k, it's the cheapest card in Nvidia's lineup with full double-precision floating point performance (which no game uses, but is common for scientific computing, Tesla's market). And on tests using that, the single-gpu Titan and Titan Black outperform the 295X2 by a large amount [anandtech.com]. AT hasn't gotten to test a Titan Z yet, but you can tell it's going to wipe the floor with the 295X2.
Yes, Nvidia advertised the original Titan as a super-gaming card, and to be fair it was their top-performing gaming card for a while. But once the 780 Ti came out, that was over, and since everyone expects a 790 dual-GPU gaming card to be announced soon, buying any Titan for gaming is a fool's choice.
Nvidia seems to still be advertising it as a top-end gaming card, presumably trying to prove the old adage about fools and their money. It just comes off as a scam to me, but anyone willing to spend over a grand without doing some proper research probably deserves to be ripped off.
Re:$3,000?? (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't. What they need this for is ghetto floating point development hardware. This is cheap by those standards and offers far more precision than consumer grade GPUs.