The NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X Review
by Ryan Smith on March 17, 2015 3:00 PM ESTCivilization: Beyond Earth
Shifting gears from action to strategy, we have Civilization: Beyond Earth, the latest in the Civilization series of strategy games. Civilization is not quite as GPU-demanding as some of our action games, but at Ultra quality it can still pose a challenge for even high-end video cards. Meanwhile as the first Mantle-enabled strategy title Civilization gives us an interesting look into low-level API performance on larger scale games, along with a look at developer Firaxis’s interesting use of split frame rendering with Mantle to reduce latency rather than improving framerates.
Though not as intricate as Crysis 3 or Shadow of Mordor, Civilization still requires a very powerful GPU to run it at 4K if you want to hit 60fps. In fact of our single-GPU configurations the GTX Titan X is the only card to crack 60fps, delivering 69fps at the game’s most extreme setting. This is once again well ahead of the GTX 980 – beating it by 31% at 4K – and 40%+ ahead of the GK110 cards. On the other hand this is the closest AMD’s R9 290XU will get, with the GTX Titan X only beating it by 23% at 4K.
Meanwhile at 1440p it’s entirely possible to play Civilization at 120fps, making it one of a few games where the GTX Titan X can keep up with high refresh rate 1440p monitors.
When it comes to minimum framerates the GTX Titan X doesn’t dominate quite like it does at average framerates, but it still handily takes the top spot. Even at its worst, the GTX Titan X can still deliver 44fps at 4K under Civilization.
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stun - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
I hope AMD announces R9 390X fast.I am finally upgrading my Radeon 6870 to either GTX 980, TITAN X, or R9 390X.
joeh4384 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
I do not think Nvidia will have that long with this being the only mega GPU on the market. I really wish they allowed partner models of the Titan. I think a lot of people would go nuts over a MSI Lightning Titan or something like that.farealstarfareal - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Yes, a big mistake like the last Titan to not allow custom AIB cards. Good likelihood the 390X will blow the doors off the card with many custom models like MSI Lightning, DCU2 etc.Also $1000 for this ??! lol is the only sensible response, none of the dual precision we saw in the original Titan to justify that price, but all of the price. Nvidia trying to cash in here, 390X will force them to do a card probably with less VRAM so people will actually buy this overpriced/overhyped card.
chizow - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Titan and NVTTM are just as much about image, style and quality as much as performance. Its pretty obvious Nvidia is proud of the look and performance of this cooler, and isn't willing to strap on a hunking mass of Al/Cu to make it look like something that fell off the back of a Humvee.They also want to make sure it fits in the SFF and Lanboxes that have become popular. In any case I'm quite happy they dropped the DP nonsense with this card and went all gaming, no cuts, max VRAM.
It is truly a card made for gamers, by gamers! 100% GeForce, 100% gaming, no BS compute.
ratzes - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
What do you think they give up when they add DP? Its the same fabrication, was for titan vs 780ti. If I'm mistaken, the only difference between cards are whether the process screwed up 1 or more of the smps, then they get sold as gaming cards at varying decreasing prices...MrSpadge - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Lot's of die space, since they used dedicated FP64 ALUs.chizow - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
@ratzes, its well documented, even in the article. DP/FP64 requires extra registers for the higher precision, which means more transistors allocated to that functionality. GM200 is only 1Bn more transistors than GK210 on the same process node, yet they managed to cram in a ton more functional units. Now compare to GM204 to GK204 3.5Bn to 5.2Bn and you can see, its pretty amazing they were even able to logically increase by 1.5x over the GM204, which we know is all gaming, no DP compute also.hkscfreak - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
Someone didn't read...nikaldro - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
fanboysm to the Nth p0waH..furthur - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
which meant fuck all when Hawaii was released