Nvidia’s Titan arrives to take the performance crown – the Preview
Test Configuration & Driver Release Notes
Test Configuration
Test Configuration – Hardware
- Intel Core i7 3770K (overclocked to 4.5GHz); Turbo is on.
- EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard (Intel Z77 chipset, latest beta BIOS, PCIe 3.0 specification; CrossFire/SLI 16x+16x using Plex chip.)
- 8GB Kingston DDR3 PC1866 Kingston RAM (4×2 GB, dual-channel at 1866MHz; supplied by Kingston)
- Cooler Master Seiden CPU Water cooler, supplied by Cooler Master
- Nvidia GTX Titan (6GB, 836/6008MHz, reference clocks), supplied by Nvidia
- Nvidia GTX 680 (2GB, 1006/6008MHz, reference clocks), supplied by Nvidia
- Nvidia GTX 690 (4GB, 1006/6008MHz, reference clocks), supplied by Nvidia
- Nvidia GTX 590 (4GB, 1607/1707MHz, reference clocks), supplied by Nvidia
- Power Color Radeon HD 7970 (3GB, overclocked to GHz speeds 1050/6000MHz)
- AMD HD 6990, reference clocks, supplied by AMD
- Onboard Realtek Audio
- Genius SP-HF 800A speakers, two pairs in 4.0 Quadraphonic configuration, supplied by Genius
- Two identical 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 hard drives configured and set up identically from drive image; one partition for Nvidia GeForce drivers and one for ATI Catalyst drivers
- Kingston 240GB HyperX SSD used for Hitman: Absolution. Supplied by Kingston
- Thermaltake ToughPower 775W power supply unit supplied by Thermaltake
- Thermaltake Overseer RX-I full tower case, supplied by Thermaltake
- Philips DVD SATA writer
- HP LP3065 2560×1600 thirty inch LCD
- ASUS VG278 27″ 3D Vision 2 Ready 120Hz display, supplied by ASUS and used to test Hitman: Absolution frame times.
Test Configuration – Software
- ATi Catalyst 13-2 Beta 5 drivers; highest quality mip-mapping set in the driver; use application settings; surface performance optimizations are off
- NVIDIA GeForce Beta 313.96 for the GTX 590/680/690. GeForce 314.09 launch drivers for the GTX Titan and 314.07 for the GTX 690 and GTX 680 for testing 5760×1080 only. High Quality; Single-display Performance mode; Prefer Maximum Performance
- Windows 7 64-bit; very latest updates
- Latest DirectX
- All games are patched to their latest versions.
- vsync is forced off in the control panels.
- Varying AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied; 16xAF forced in control panel for Crysis.
- All results show average frame rates
- Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
- Windows 7 64, all DX9 titles were run under DX9 render paths, DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths and DX11 titles under DX11 render paths.
The Benchmarks
- Synthetic
- Vantage
- 3DMark 11
- 3D Mark 2013 Firestrike/Firestrike Extreme
- Heaven 3.0/4.0
- Valley 1.0
DX9- Left 4 Dead 2
- Serious Sam 3 BFE
- Alan Wake: Ameican Nightmare
- The Witcher 2
- Borderlands 2
DX10- Crysis
- Far Cry 2
- Just Cause 2
- World-in-Conflict: Soviet Assault
- Resident Evil 5
DX11- BattleForge
- Alien vs. Predator
- STALKER, Call of Pripyat
- Metro 2033
- F1 2010
- H.A.W.X. 2
- Lost Planet 2
- Total War: Shogun II
- Civilization V
- Crysis 2
- Dirt 3
- Deus Ex: Human Revolution
- Batman: Arkham City
- Battlefield 3
- Max Payne 3
- the Secret World
- Sleeping Dogs
- Sniper Elite V2
- Hitman: Absolution
- Assassin’s Creed III
The above is our test bench and we are running these benches right now in preparation for our Thursday performance evaluation. We may also be able to cover some frame time comparisons. Let’s head to our pre-conclusion.
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holy geeeez
Hi there, first of all thank you for a great site. I love your extended benchmark suite, it’s so great to see a site not use the same few games again and again. I have a few things though, that I’m missing.
1) It would be nice if you could take a screenshot of the image settings in the Catalyst and nvidia control panel. There are just so many settings, and I’m not quite sure how to interpret what you write.
2) Looking at your previous “The war of the WHQL” article, I was missing an easy way to compare the overall performance. Something like a performance index with and without AA would be great. And perhaps highlight the highest score in the table
3) I’m not sure what the most normal/popular clock speed of the 680 and 7970 is, but since few people buy reference cards, I think you should use a clock speed that more closely resembles what people get when they buy an Asus, MSI or Sapphire card and so on. The performance difference is quite large between the slowest and fastest Asus 670 for instance. The TOP model (which I think is the most popular one), has a GPU Boost Clock of 1137 MHz and a GPU Base Clock of 1058 MHz, compared to a GPU Boost Clock of 980 MHz and a GPU Base Clock of 915 MHz. In benchmarks the fastest model is a lot faster, there is really a big difference but many don’t seem to pay any attention to it. Also your 7970 is listed as overclocked? I’m not sure what the most popular speed of a 7970 is again, but it just caught my eye.
4) Don’t stop testing for smoothness
Thank-you for your comments.
1) As to the control panels, they are set to default (“use application settings”) except that Nvidia’s has power limitations removed, High Quality is used instead of Quality and Vsync is off. In the AMD CP, High Quality is used instead of quality, surface and other optimizations including tessellation are OFF (application settings override CP setting)
2) We almost never bench without AA. We do highlight the highest scores when we are only looking at two sets of drivers to see the performance changes. We don’t usually do it when we are comparing 4 sets of drivers (2-AMD and 2-Nvidia)
3) We use the reference clocks for a GTX 680 and the reference clocks for a HD 7970 at GHz speeds (with the boost locked on)
4) We are resuming frame time benching this week
You might consider joining ABT forum. We’d love to have your input there!