GeForce GTX 780 Review: The Titan Descendant

I'm pretty certain those willing to purchase a Titan, knows the pros and cons of single GPU vs dual GPU vs SLI configuration. If you don't want to or simply can't deal with dual GPUs or SLI configurations, the Titan will have great appeal as a single GPU solution. It's sad really that such an option will have a price premium, but thats marketing for you.
Firstly, I'd say that of the people I know -and those associates on forums, that purchased the Titan- none are disappointed that they did. They still own the fastest single GPU going, and even an overclocked 780 barely matches a stock Titan - which in itself is a capable overclocker.
The value of the card tends to depend on whether you look at it from "top down" or "bottom up". The GTX 780 is weighted against the cards above and below it ( note to ghostryder: I made no mention of pricing of the 780). The Titan is weighted against the Quadro cards- and in that light represents a pretty good option for application developers at $1K, but the 780 in turn seems to be weighted in the middle of where it should lie. If measuring against the Titan the card would be a $750 item...if measured against the HD7970GE/GTX 680 then closer to $550.
That in itself is a false economy since neither the 7970 or 680 justify their present pricetags. The HD 7950 at ~$280-310 doesn't offer 33% less performance than the 7970 at ~$400, and nor does the 670 (~$370) offer 20%+ lower performance than the usually $450 priced 680. Based solely on performance both the 7970 and 680 should be priced $40-50 lower than they are with the 780 slotting in at ~$500.

Of course the pricing is largely immaterial until the dust settles with the 770 and 760 Ti launches over the next couple of weeks, and whatever reaction this provokes from AMD.
 
I'm pretty certain those willing to purchase a Titan, knows the pros and cons of single GPU vs dual GPU vs SLI configuration. If you don't want to or simply can't deal with dual GPUs or SLI configurations, the Titan will have great appeal as a single GPU solution. It's sad really that such an option will have a price premium, but thats marketing for you.
Firstly, I'd say that of the people I know -and those associates on forums, that purchased the Titan- none are disappointed that they did. They still own the fastest single GPU going, and even an overclocked 780 barely matches a stock Titan - which in itself is a capable overclocker.
The value of the card tends to depend on whether you look at it from "top down" or "bottom up". The GTX 780 is weighted against the cards above and below it ( note to ghostryder: I made no mention of pricing of the 780). The Titan is weighted against the Quadro cards- and in that light represents a pretty good option for application developers at $1K, but the 780 in turn seems to be weighted in the middle of where it should lie. If measuring against the Titan the card would be a $750 item...if measured against the HD7970GE/GTX 680 then closer to $550.
That in itself is a false economy since neither the 7970 or 680 justify their present pricetags. The HD 7950 at ~$280-310 doesn't offer 33% less performance than the 7970 at ~$400, and nor does the 670 (~$370) offer 20%+ lower performance than the usually $450 priced 680. Based solely on performance both the 7970 and 680 should be priced $40-50 lower than they are with the 780 slotting in at ~$500.

Of course the pricing is largely immaterial until the dust settles with the 770 and 760 Ti launches over the next couple of weeks, and whatever reaction this provokes from AMD.

I agree that none of the top of the line cards around really provide a decent price point overall. That Titan though no matter how much of the specs you go over cannot justify its 1000$ price and now that we have the 780, its become even less justified when comparing the two. Yes the Titan is more compared to the Quaddro series of cards but its marketed more towards being the "Gaming Super Computer" graphics card (Got that from NVidia itself) meaning they intend it to be for super high performance gaming. With this 780 being so close and even by a modest overclock performing right on or close to the titans performance, why buy it? No matter how you look at it, this feels to me like with the 6 series of cards comparing the GTX 670 to the GTX 680. I knew many people who upgrade every year (For whatever reason...) who owned a GTX 580 or a pair and sold them to buy GTX 670's. They bought them because like before, with a modest overclock you could match the performance of the GTX 680 with ease. In fact the only downside to that setup was that the 670 only allowed up to 3 way SLI where as the 680 allowed 4 way (reading off the site it says the 680 only supports 3 cards in SLI...I swear ive seen 4 card setups though so I may rescend the differences in a sec after checking into that). What im saying is the pricing schemes seem odd that they would make these so close in performance and then price them the way they are. My bottom line to this is simple, the titan should never have been priced at 1000 dollars. If it had been at a lets say 800 for a titan and then 550-600 for a 780, I could say the price to performance ratios were better and both would have each their own valid points for buying. However right now, if you really want a high end NVidia GPU, it seems that the 780 is a more superior choice in almost all regards (Buy superior I mean bang for buck FYI). Now that again could change with the 770 coming out, but only the future will tell.
 
I agree that none of the top of the line cards around really provide a decent price point overall. That Titan though no matter how much of the specs you go over cannot justify its 1000$ price and now that we have the 780, its become even less justified when comparing the two
Probably because you are only looking at one aspect. For instance:

Tesla K20 : Hyper-Q + Grid Management + Dynamic Parallelism + RDMA + 1:3 FP64 + ECC + drivers.......$3200-4500
GTX Titan: Hyper-Q (which is available) + Dynamic Parallelism + 1:3 FP64..................................$1000
GTX 780 :..........................................................................................................................................$650
Yes the Titan is more compared to the Quaddro series of cards but its marketed more towards being the "Gaming Super Computer" graphics card (Got that from NVidia itself) meaning they intend it to be for super high performance gaming.
Really. When you got that snippet from Nvidia maybe you should have checked out the other markets they are aiming at. You do know that there are more than a few OEM workstations available (e.g. Boxxtech, Xi ) along with OEMs that offer both gaming and WS (Maingear, Origin, Puget)
With this 780 being so close and even by a modest overclock performing right on or close to the titans performance, why buy it?
From a purely gaming perspective you wouldn't, but gaming isn't the be all and end all. Just because mainstream tech sites target gaming almost exclusively doesn't mean that gaming is the only market. So why would someone buy Titan ? Some portion of the concurrent kernel execution available to the K20, the ability for kernels to launch subsequent kernels (Hyper-Q / Dynamic Parallelism), double precision, and a 6GB memory for large compute tasks are all pretty obvious. You think that Titan outsold the GTX 690 in three months based solely upon gamers ?
If you think that Titan isn't a saleable SKU, then any amount of links to developer and academic sites disproving your argument isn't going to make any difference. I think from a purely gaming viewpoint the 780 renders the Titan superfluous for all except benchmarkers and people who simply want the fastest at any cost. That has been established...you are flogging a dead horse.
 
Ok, all your recent arguments are based around the fact that your saying the GTX 780 was more for the Gaming Community where as the titan was more aimed as a Mix of Game and Developing/high computing needs or things that follow like that. Heres the issue, the series of development cards is called the Quaddro series of cards that are designed for workstations. While the series Labeled GTX are for high end gaming (And no im not going to base an argument off names). The Graphics card on the site just like I said earlier labels this as the most powerful single GPU gaming and high performance video card. They label the power of the GK110 and show that it is their next line of video cards and the true power of Kepler. They released the card under the pretenses that it was the top of the line Single GPU gaming card, not the workstation hybrid card or whatever you trying to defend this card into being. A few websites of people showing what they are doing with their cards is great and shows what some people do with their cards. I could go off and say I bitcoin mine with my HD6990s or lots of other things but that does not make it the main focus or make it the main reason people bought them (Though I saw machines for sale with those cards in them labeled as Bitcoin Mining Machines).

As your saying from a purely gaming standpoint that the 780 is a better buy than the Titan. Yes that's the point, that's where this article focuses, that's what people here are mostly thinking of, and what most people reading this are probably thinking when considering buying it. Were not debating what other tasks this card or the Titan can do, were debating based off the information in a gaming and typical use and in which the titan is now a horrible choice as the 780 seems to be so close in performance that it does not justify spending 350 more. Your defending a card on a standpoint that has a low relevance point in this area of people. If you want to discuss that, id be happy to discuss its other areas in comparisons to other cards in that category. But making this to be a hybrid card, is not gonna sweeten the deal for most of the consumers looking at these cards.

The titan may have other potentials, but based on its advertising, this was labeled a gaming machine, its other potentials are there but are not the main focus. Right now even with those extras which are nice to developers and such, there is not a main reason to get the card at its current price point because it seems no matter which way you look, there seems to be an alternative solution.

Oh and yes Really, when its you main headline, that's what were all gonna see when clicking on the titan link on their main site.
 
Are we forgetting the "Mines bigger than yours" factor? And the fact people are willing to pay just so they can say this phrase. Price/performance rarely has any bearings on why people purchase cutting edge technology.
 
That's a Valid point as well, ya got me there Clifford.

Yea saying you have a GTX Titan over saying you have a GTX 780, that does make a difference no matter how you look at it.
 
Were not debating what other tasks this card or the Titan can do.
That's exactly what you're debating. YOU bought up the comparison. In this thread, forty posts exist prior to your post that made no comparison (and barely a mention) with Titan...until you posted:
Though I feel it's a insult to those who bought the Titan because from the paper specs and the few benchmarks I've seen, it seems that the price to performance level of the 780 is wayyy better than the gtx Titan and I'm curious as to why they would put that performance so close and then charge this price.
You said you were curious- or is "curious" a metaphor for a vehicle to segue into a rant? If you were merely curious, then your question has been answered some time earlier. If the differentiators aren't those l listed earlier ( bragging rights/benchmark attainment, Hyper-Q, FP64) why would even mainstream gaming reviews publish non-gaming compute benchmarks?
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And why would Nvidia have the Titan as the poster child for their CUDA Developer page ?
Your reasoning seems to be that because you frequent gaming orientated sites and you see (strangely enough) gaming orientated content, that other academic, developer, and compute orientated marketing doesn't exist just because you don't see it. The reason gaming takes the centre stage is that it is just the high-vis segment - a segment filled with page hits, fanboys, flamewars, and more page hits.
You don't see it, but the non-gaming aspect received more weight in the PC Gamer article regarding sales. Just to clarify...this is a PC Gaming site pointing out a major reason for the Titan sales figures being non-gaming application usage.
Titan is the only GeForce branded card to have an uncapped double precision rate. If the card was marketed and intended entirely as a gaming card WHY would the card have a 1:3 FP64 rate? A feature that is not required for gaming, and is actually detrimental to a gaming card because of the increased power needed to run it- so much so, that the boost feature is curtailed if FP64 is used.
Should be a relatively easy question to answer given your expertise in the matter ;)
 
Divide, your defending the card by showing its other tasks it can accomplish by the other included features. Yes it has those features and is great at that, but its not the best, there are alternatives to that and if people are trying to do hyper-q or FP64. In terms of that stuff, yes it has a wider variety of features for developers and stuff when compared to a GTX 780, but the brute force comparison of the cards shows that the 780 is very close and spec wise, the cards are in a close competition but for 350 less even if you add the included features, it still does not validate the price. Devlopers may seek that card, and that great, but just because NVidia made that the poster child for that page, they also have it as the poster child for gaming and label it as such.

Your willing to defend this card to the grave giving it more purposes to charge 1000 dollars but then dissing other cards more powerful at the same price point, im saying that 1000 for less performance, or just barely more performance than a 780 seems very odd and does not validate the price.

You keep trying to say I brought up comparing other tasks the titan can do. I never mentioned such a thing on my original comparisons except when saying it as a response to you. Im saying that when the dust settles, yes the titan beats it, but just barely, and just like with the previous round of cards when comparing the 670 to the 680, the two are so close that with a modest overclock on the lower card, it beats or ties its upper competitor with ease. It actually harms the cards reputation in that respect and I know many people once again that bought 670 over 680 when they had owned 580's previously because of that purpose, as I know others who are complaining about that minute difference on the titan to 780.

If you want the titan for deleopment purposes only, go for it, but I highly doubt that's Nvidia's bread and butter was Deleopers bying the card. It probably helped, but I see more people talking about their GAMING rigs with Titans rather than their workstations.

Stop putting words in my mouth, and trying to make it look like I brought things up that I didn't. I hve not been debating the developmental standpoint except with you since you seem adamant to bring that in.
 
Except 650 ti boost,every nvidia kepler cards are darn overpriced and the same trend continues with gtx 780 for 650$!whooping ask.
 
If you are upset with the Titans price then you are missing the point entirely. Even us Nvidia guys know its a ridiculous damn price, but this isn't the first time the fastest single GPU has been priced way over its value.
Plus Nvidia asks a lot for their products (and has for the last 5 years) because they feel a GTX brings more to the table and is a higher quality GPU.
The Titan is a message to the industry, with so much compute power it is much more then just a gaming GPU. 6GB VRAM and a crap load of CUDA cores don't hurt either.
The GTX 780 is their play card. And its a good hand.
 
It still cant validate its price and even adding the features along with the VRAM does not validate its price point. In the last 3 years, we have gone from having dual GPU cards in the same generation costing 700-800 to having a single GPU cost 1000 dollars. The price points are skyrocketing for graphics cards when in the past the same era GPUS used to cost a reasonable price point. You can love the Titan all you want, that's your prerogative, IM saying that the comparison in performance between the two shows minute differences and the fact that its a 350 dollar add on to get the Titan vs the 780 when you could essentially overclock it slightly to get pretty much the same performance, why buy it? I still stand with the people saying the 780 is still overpriced as well, but its a good card at a better price than that of the titan.

We should not be encouraging ludicrous pricing, and Amstech, "They Believe" that's the point, they believe does not justify its price. Your saying that just because Nvidia believes something does not make it true. Once again comparing the the dual GPUs even listed in this review, the power differences between the other 1000 dollar Dynamic duo of cards from NVidia and AMD are well above the titan in almost every category (Which BTW 7990 has already fixed the frame latency issues/improved them greatly. that took less than 1 month after release :) ). Your encouraging them to keep it overpriced for what reason, because "THEY Believe" it to be higher, that does not at all justify the price and its starting to show.
 
If you are upset with the Titans price then you are missing the point entirely. Even us Nvidia guys know its a ridiculous damn price, but this isn't the first time the fastest single GPU has been priced way over its value.
Plus Nvidia asks a lot for their products (and has for the last 5 years) because they feel a GTX brings more to the table and is a higher quality GPU.
The Titan is a message to the industry, with so much compute power it is much more then just a gaming GPU. 6GB VRAM and a crap load of CUDA cores don't hurt either.
The GTX 780 is their play card. And its a good hand.
Too bad AMD doesnt make compute cards (Tesla-league). Their highest end FirePro is a 7970 with professional drivers and support. I dont think AMD can compete with the 780 unless they increase core counts
 
Divide, your defending the card by showing its other tasks it can accomplish by the other included features.
If you mean that the card has a user base that doesn't include gaming, then yes.
Yes it has those features and is great at that, but its not the best, there are alternatives to that and if people are trying to do hyper-q or FP64.
There certainly are. The only problem is that the next cheapest option for a Hyper-Q capable card is $3000.
Devlopers may seek that card, and that great, but just because NVidia made that the poster child for that page, they also have it as the poster child for gaming and label it as such.
Correct. The Titan leverages all three of Nvidia's GPU product lines- Tesla, Quadro, and GeForce. Remember that GK 110 saw the light of day principally because of the ORNL contract, and is in circulation in higher numbers as a GPGPU (General Purpose GPU) than as either a workstation of gaming GPU. Why wouldn't Nvidia leverage the maximum sales and marketing potential ? Answer: Of course they would.
Your willing to defend this card to the grave giving it more purposes to charge 1000 dollars
Nope, I think you're hyperbolizing. All I'm saying is that there is a market for a $1K Titan when the next option for the feature set costs in excess of $3000.
but then dissing other cards more powerful at the same price point
Dissing?
1. Where am I "dissing" other cards ? In general if I point out a negative of any hardware it is because the negative point is valid and tangible...kind of like when I agreed that as a purely gaming card the Titan is rendered superfluous by the GTX 780...or the limited appeal of the HD 7990
2. Dissing seems like an odd term to use for a self professed 35+ year old "data center manager"
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First off im older than you and I work for a data center who works with machines every day
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You keep trying to say I brought up comparing other tasks the titan can do. I never mentioned such a thing on my original comparisons except when saying it as a response to you.
Correct you didn't. You decided that the comparison should be strictly gaming even though the Titan possesses a feature set that is lacking in the GTX 780- a feature set that actually appeals to a different user base whose application usage is closer to virtualization than gaming.
I highly doubt that's Nvidia's bread and butter was Deleopers bying the card.
OK. This a tough one...who to believe? PC Gamer and Nvidia spokesman...or random internet guy with comprehension and persecution issues, prone to hyperbole. I may have to start a poll.
It probably helped, but I see more people talking about their GAMING rigs with Titans rather than their workstations.
Ummm, maybe thats because you frequent gaming orientated sites
Stop putting words in my mouth, and trying to make it look like I brought things up that I didn't.
That's actually the crux of the issue. You haven't considered all the options- and because it doesn't fit your limited and flawed argument you will continue to ignore anything that doesn't fit with your world view.
I would hazard a guess and say that with the GTX 780 proving to be the much better buy on a gaming basis that the Titan will sell in greater numbers as a CUDA developers card than as a gaming board.
 
Ah switching to insults again I see, your obviously mad again.

Ill go in order of the ones I feel deserve a response and are not childish responses from someone clearly mad still.

Im not hyperbolizing anything, you keep trying to add things to the card giving it all these reasons for the price. My point was comparing its power on the tests shown and given the price for high end gaming, its power no longer matches at all its price when compared to the 780, the 780 is a much better buy (Though again its still a little pricey).

Yes, in the last thread you started this whole debate saying the 7990 was not a good card because on the BETA drivers even though it was winning in most tests, the beta tests against the 690 in frame latency were that whole 15-20% better and that's all that mattered.

FYI im 23, not hiding anything Chef. And yes I work at the Texas State Data Center in San Angelo Texas as a manager of middle operations. Look it up, its owned by Xerox and affiliated with IBM.

A set that is lacking in the GTX 780, pfft ok, that "set" is not that impressive. I still stand by if your really in need of those features to actually get a professional card, and not a hybrid. But whatever, its yours or whose ever choice what they spend their money on.

Ok who to believe, the CHEF from New Zealand that knows how to use Wikipedia, or the majority of forums and review sites out there.

I frequent all sorts of sites, maybe gaming is my primary focus, but even developer threads are still not focusing completely on the titan. Yes ive seen a few and its a nice card for that, but I still see more on the OTHER cards out there which come with more software and features.

Limited view? Flawed argument? No I have no issues with hearing different view points, I get annoyed at people like you who act like know it alls and fight every point and act like they are above everyone else. Your the one who keeps arguing and adding points even though I have multiple times said focus on the 780 and the other cards from NVidia. I have multiple times said from what we see, the Titan is not near as good for the purposes posted or that its as good a buy. You brought up the developer points and tried to make an argument because your still mad.

To all below, hes full of hot air and blowing it straight on the fire.
 
I saw another benchmark between the 7970 GE and the 780. The margin was only 5%.
That's easy to believe. You could conceivably have a benchmark suite centred upon Sleeping Dogs and DiRT:Showdown and have the benchmarks favour the 7970GE over the GTX 780.
 
Im not hyperbolizing anything
Oh, I think you are. Allow me to demonstrate:
Yes, in the last thread you started this whole debate saying the 7990 was not a good card because on the BETA drivers even though it was winning in most tests, the beta tests against the 690 in frame latency were that whole 15-20% better and that's all that mattered.
When what I actually said was:
True enough that the latency/frame rendering issue isn't a be-all-and-end-all. It neither affects all titles, nor all users. It has however become a convenient whipping stick for Nvidia fanboys, but then, if the roles were reversed I doubt the finger pointing would be any less than it is at present.
Fact of the matter is that AMD has had a dual Tahiti card on the roadmap for a year, and Crossfire GCN issues with latency and inconsistent frame rendering for longer still. Nvidia had a similar problem with Kepler when it was first released. The difference is Nvidia instituted frame metering/frame delay and had the problem fixed within a few months, while AMD either didn't think the matter worth investigating, knew that benchmark averages would take a hit, or decided that the R&D outweighed the gameplay experience of the affected. My guess is a combination of the three, and the tipping point only came when the PR implications imploded as more sites moved from a strict statistical evaluation (min/max/average framerate) to actual gameplay experience
No mention of the 690.
No mention of "15-20% better" - whatever that means
No mention that the HD 7990 "was not good".
And of course, I didn't start the "debate". I explained the difference between display (monitor) latency and frame latency, but I think you'll find that you and amstech started the "debate" regarding frame metering some time before my post which appears above.

You do understand what the word hyperbole means I take it? In addition to the hyperbole, you throw around accusations and fictions and expect to not get called on them...
FYI im 23
Maybe you should start acting like it. Just saying.
Just for the record, I didn't ask and I don't care.

Anyhow. I'm done with you for the present. Either your nonsensical style or lack of grammar are making reading your posts a major chore.
 
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