NVIDIA is launching a new, ultra high-end graphics card
today, the long rumored GeForce GTX Titan. Although the card itself and
a couple of its features are new to the consumer graphics card market,
many details of the GPU powering the GTX Titan, namely the NVIDIA GK110,
have been previously covered here at HotHardware. In fact, NVIDIA
revealed the GK110
at GTC 2012 in May of last year and released its first Tesla-branded
products based on the GPU a few months later. The GK110 is also a key
component of the GeForce GTX Titan’s namesake, the Titan Supercomputer,
which uses almost 19,000 of the GPUs in tandem to crunch numbers at a
brisk 20 petaflops. Products designed for the HPC space are somewhat
different than what power our gaming PCs though. The GPUs on the cards
may be similar, but the power, form factor and budget considerations are
in totally different leagues.
Those requirements compelled NVIDIA to design the GeForce GTX Titan in such a way that it will not only usher in a new class uber-powerful gaming systems that can rip through today’s hottest games without breaking a sweat, but high-end small form factor systems as well. We’ve got the GeForce GTX Titan’s main features and specifications detailed below, along with some related reading materials if you’d like a refresher on some of the technologies at work inside GK110 GPU. Many more details follow on the pages ahead, though you’ll have to wait a little while longer, as we're held on embargo with the results of our benchmarks and performance tests. (Update: GeForce GTX Titan performance available here.)
Those requirements compelled NVIDIA to design the GeForce GTX Titan in such a way that it will not only usher in a new class uber-powerful gaming systems that can rip through today’s hottest games without breaking a sweat, but high-end small form factor systems as well. We’ve got the GeForce GTX Titan’s main features and specifications detailed below, along with some related reading materials if you’d like a refresher on some of the technologies at work inside GK110 GPU. Many more details follow on the pages ahead, though you’ll have to wait a little while longer, as we're held on embargo with the results of our benchmarks and performance tests. (Update: GeForce GTX Titan performance available here.)
 |
|
| Graphics Processing Clusters | 5 |
| Streaming Multiprocessors | 14 |
| CUDA Cores (single precision) | 2688 |
| CUDA Cores (double precision) | 896 |
| Texture Units | 224 |
| ROP Units | 48 |
| Base Clock | 836 MHz |
| Boost Clock | 876 MHz |
| Memory Clock (Data rate) | 6008 MHz |
| L2 Cache Size | 1536K |
| Total Video Memory | 6144MB GDDR5 |
| Memory Interface | 384-bit |
| Total Memory Bandwidth | 288.4 GB/s |
| Texture Filtering Rate (Bilinear) | 187.5 GigaTexels/sec |
| Fabrication Process | 28 nm |
| Transistor Count | 7.1 Billion |
| Connectors |
2 x Dual-Link DVI 1 x HDMI 1 x DisplayPort |
| Form Factor | Dual Slot |
| Power Connectors | One 8-pin and one 6-pin |
| Recommended Power Supply | 600 Watts |
| Thermal Design Power (TDP) | 250 Watts |
| Thermal Threshold | 95°C |
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan’s main
features and specifications are listed in the table above. Before we get
into the specifics of the card, its GPU, and the systems it will power,
however, we want to direct your attention to a few past HotHardware
articles that lay the foundation for what we’ll be showing you here
today.
GK110 GPU Die Shot
Although the GeForce GTX Titan is built
around a different GPU than its predecessors, the Kepler-based GK110 at
the heart of Titan leverages technologies first introduced on
previous-generation NVIDIA products. As such, we’d recommend checking
out these articles for more detailed coverage of many of NVIDIA’s
existing technologies that carry over to the new GeForce GTX Titan:
- GeForce GTX 690 Review: Dual NVIDIA GK104 GPUs
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review: Kepler Debuts
- NVIDIA TXAA Brings Movie CGI Rendering To PC Games
- GPU Tech: NVIDIA Talks Fermi, Unveils Nexus
- NVIDIA GF100 Architecture and Feature Preview
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480: GF100 Has Landed
- NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround is Here
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580: A New Flagship Emerges
- NVIDIA 3D Vision 2 and The Asus VG278H LCD Review
Let's take a look at the massive GK110 GPU before we dive more deeply into NVIDIA's new Titan graphics card.
our initial coverage here and more here in a follow-up we posted a few months later when NVIDIA officially launched the Tesla K20 and K20X featuring the GK110.
The GK110 GPU is massive to say the least.
To recap, the first thing you need to know
about the GK110 is that the thing is a monster. The GK110 is comprised
of roughly 7.1 billion transistors (yes, billion—with a B), which is
over three times the number of transistors used in Intel’s Sandy
Bridge-E based Core i7-3960X processor and twice as many as GK104 which powers the GTX 680. NVDIA has these chips built using TSMC’s 28nm process node.
NVIDIA GK110 High-Level Block Diagram
The GK110’s original design features 15 SMX
clusters, each with 192 single-precision CUDA cores and 64
double-precision cores, for a grand total of 2880 SP cores and 960 DP
cores. Please note, however, that one SMX is disabled in every GK110 to
keep yields acceptable, which brings the actual, workable core counts to
2688 (SP) and 896 (DP). As configured on the GeForce GTX Titan, the
GK110 GPU also features 224 texture units, 48 ROPs, 1.5MB of L2 cache and a 384-bit memory interface, up from 256-bits on the GK104.
A Close-Up of a single SMX in the GK110
The new NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan’s design
language is similar to the company’s current flagship dual-GPU powered
GeForce GTX 690, but there are some obvious departures due to the vastly
different card configurations.
As was listed in the specifications a
couple of pages back, the GeForce GTX Titan is outfitted with a GK110
GPU, with a base clock of 836MHz and a Boost click of 876MHz. The card’s
massive 6GB frame buffer is clocked at 6008MHz (effective GDDR5 data
rate) and the memory links to the GPU via a wide 384-bit interface. At
those clocks, the GeForce GTX Titan offers up a peak textured fillrate
of 187.5 GTexels/s, 4500 GFLOPS of compute performance, and 288.4 GB/s
of memory bandwidth, which should make the Titan the fastest single-GPU
powered card available today.
Like the GeForce GTX 690, the GeForce GTX Titan is outfitted with a base frame made of aluminum to add rigidity. And the card has a metal fan housing as well. The GeForce GTX logo along the top edge of the card lights up like the GTX 690's too, though brightness can be controlled on the Titan.
Like the GeForce GTX 690, the GeForce GTX Titan is outfitted with a base frame made of aluminum to add rigidity. And the card has a metal fan housing as well. The GeForce GTX logo along the top edge of the card lights up like the GTX 690's too, though brightness can be controlled on the Titan.
The actual cooling hardware on the GTX
Titan consists of a large vapor chamber with a densely packed,
nickel-plated aluminum finstack, and large rear-mounted barrel-type fan
with user-adjustable fan curves. Like the GeForce GTX 690, the Titan
also uses low-profile components on about the front 65% of the PCB
around the GPU and the card’s cooler has a flat, ducted baseplate for
unobstructed airflow, which minimizes turbulence and helps quiet down
and better cool the card. There is a window cut into the fan shroud that
shows off the finstack (under a Lexan window), and due to the fan
configuration, virtually all of the heat produced by the card is
exhausted from a system. The GeForce GTX 690, with its centrally mounted
axial-type fan, would expel half of the heated air from the system and
dump the other half into the case. Again, Titan's design pushes all
airflow outside the system it's installed in.
Outputs consist of a pair of dual-link DVI outputs, a full-sized DisplayPort output, and an HDMI connector. The GeForce GTX Titan should have more than enough muscle to push multiple displays simultaneously, and as such it, supports NVIDIA's 3D Vision Surround technology.
GPU Boost 2.0:
NVIDIA is also ushering in a new version of
GPU Boost with the GeForce GTX Titan, dubbed GPU Boost 2.0.
Fundamentally, GPU Boost 1.0 and 2.0 are similar in that they both allow
the graphics card’s GPU to ramp up clock speeds and dynamically alter
voltages in an effort to increase performance, but the criteria used to
determine the boost frequencies and voltages changes with GPU Boost 2.0.
With GPU Boost 1.0, which was first
introduced with Kepler, a power target was used to determine the peak
boost clocks. If a given workload wasn’t fully utilizing available board
power and environmental conditions and temperatures were acceptable,
the GPU’s voltage and frequency would be boosted to take advantage of
any spare power. We’ve got a more detailed explanation of GPU Boost 1.0
in our original review of the GeForce GTX 680 if you’d like to check it out.
GPU Boost 2.0 works in a similar manner, but in lieu of a strict power target it uses an actual GPU
temperature target in its determination of peak boost frequencies and
voltages. NVIDIA was relatively conservative with GPU Boost 1.0. Even
though the max power target may have been achieved with a given
workload, the GPU temperature may not have hit its peak thermal
threshold. With GPU Boost 2.0, if there is still temperature headroom
available, the GPU will continue to ramp clocks and voltage until the
temperature target attained. The end result is that the GPU ultimately
runs at higher clocks more often than it would have with GPU Boost 1.0.
We should also mention that NVIDIA will
allow users to unlock even higher voltages with Titan than were
available with GPU Boost 1.0. With GPU Boost 1.0, the maximum voltage
was determined by the power target and could not be increased to a level
that would impact the long-term reliability of the silicon. A
combination of high voltages and high temperatures can and will damage
silicon, but on their own—within reasonable limits—neither one will do
much, if any, damage. You can run a chip with higher-than-normal
voltages (again, within limits) at low temperatures, without affecting
the long-term reliability all that much. Conversely, you can also run at
higher-than-normal temperatures with lower voltages without measurably
affecting long-term reliability. Higher than normal voltages and
temperatures combined can and will damage a chip, however.
If you’re cool with pushing your card
beyond what NVIDIA considers normal limits though, with the GTX Titan,
you’ll now have that ability through some third-party tweaking tools,
like EVGA Precision or MSI Afterburner, provided you accept a warning
and acknowledge that your actions may affect the long term reliability
of the GPU. There are still limits in place, NVIDIA’s not going to let
customers drag a slider and fry their GPU after all, but if the
performance increase offered by GPU Boost and basic overclocking aren’t
enough and you don’t mind pushing things further, potentially shortening
the life of your card, you can go for it.
GPU Boost 2.0 (cont.):
What the new temperature target of GPU Boost 2.0 does, over and above allowing the card to ramp up to higher clocks more often, is significantly alter the temperature distribution of the GPU. With GPU Boost 1.0, users would often see a gradual ramping up or down of the GPU temperature as the chip idled or was put under load.
The typical temperature distribution of a
GeForce 6 series card with GPU Boost 1.0 is represented in the slide
above. What that graph says is that the GPU would most often run at
about 80°C, and less often at lower temps or at higher temperatures
approaching the GPU’s maximum threshold.
Temperature distributions with GPU Boost
2.0 are very different. Due to the fact that GPU Boost 2.0 uses an
actual temperature target, which is monitored in real time, frequencies
and voltages are ramped more aggressively to push the GPU right up to
the desired temperature target. On the flip side, should the GPU
temperature exceed the target, GPU Boost 2.0 will scale the voltage and
frequency lower to bring the temp back down more quickly.
Users will have the ability to alter the
desired temperature target with GPU Boost 2.0 as well. If you have a
well-ventilated case with good cooling and want to improve a GeForce GTX
Titan’s overall performance, you can increase the temperature target
which will allow GPU Boost 2.0 to push the card’s GPU voltage and
frequency more aggressively to run at the desired target.
Display Overclocking:
In addition to GPU Boost 2.0, NVIDIA is
introducing Display Overclocking with the GeForce GTX Titan. The vast
majority of standard LCD monitors being sold today will operate at
display refresh rate 60Hz. 3D capable LCD monitors will typically have a
display refresh rate of 120Hz. In the case of a standard LCD monitor,
what that means is that when V-Sync is enabled, even if the graphics
card is capable of higher performance, it’s outputting 60 frames per
second to the monitor.
Some monitors, however, are capable of
operating at higher refresh rates than their official rating. What
NVIDIA’s Display Overclocking does is essentially ignore the feedback
from the screen’s EDID (Extended Display Identification Data) and allow
the graphics card to output higher refresh rates.
Like any overclocking, however, your mileage will vary from monitor to monitor. One monitor may be able to operate at refresh rates 20% higher than its rated specification, while another monitor of the same type may choke at slightly higher speeds. This is a feature that individuals will have to play with to find the sweet spot on their particular setup.
Like any overclocking, however, your mileage will vary from monitor to monitor. One monitor may be able to operate at refresh rates 20% higher than its rated specification, while another monitor of the same type may choke at slightly higher speeds. This is a feature that individuals will have to play with to find the sweet spot on their particular setup.
NVIDIA took a somewhat different
approach during the lead-up to the launch of the GeForce GTX Titan. Not
only was the GK110 GPU powering the card previously announced, but in
terms of sheer performance alone, the Titan may or may not outpace the
roughly 10 month old, dual-GPU GeForce GTX 690, depending on the
workload. What the GeForce GTX Titan does offer, however, is the ability
to fit into more form factors than the GTX 690 and it sets a new
high-bar in terms of ultimate performance in ultra-high-end systems.
What you’ll see from a number of NVIDIA’s
key system partners moving forward are new flagship and small form
factor systems, all powered by the GeForce GTX Titan. As it stands
today, there is no more powerful graphics setup than a 3-Way GeForce GTX
Titan configuration. At the same time, the Titan’s lower TDP, cooler
configuration, and acoustic profile make it well-suited to boutique
small form factor systems as well.
Maingear SHIFT Super Stock with GeForce GTX Titan Tri-SLI
To evaluate the GeForce GTX Titan, we were initially provided an absolutely gorgeous Maingear SHIFT Super Stock
system, decked out with three Titans and a slick white and green paint
job that would make even the most ardent auto enthusiast envious. An
unforeseen issue with its motherboard ultimately prevented us from fully
evaluating this new SHIFT
configuration, but we’ll revisit it at some point in the future. One of
the main reasons we were sent this high-end SHIFT system was because
its 3-Way SLI setup supplanted Quad-SLI with a pair of GeForce GTX 690
cards as the premiere NVIDIA-based graphics configuration. A single
GeForce GTX Titan may or may not outpace a single GTX 690 all of the
time, but three GK110s is more powerful than a quartet of GK104s.
The GeForce GTX Titan also allows systems
builders to offer killer graphics performance in form factors that
couldn’t accommodate the GeForce GTX 690. Not only does the GeForce GTX
Titan have a 20% lower TDP than the GTX 690, but it’s .5” shorter, and
its cooler configuration exhausts hot air outside of a system. The
GeForce GTX 690 exhausts some air outside of a system, but dumps the
rest into the case. The GeForce GTX Titan is also quieter than previous
high-end GeForce GTX 600 series cards, which is another desirable aspect
for SFF rigs.
Companies like Maingear, Falcon Northwest, Digital Storm, iBuyPower, Origin and others will all be offering small form factor systems powered by the GeForce GTX Titan.
Companies like Maingear, Falcon Northwest, Digital Storm, iBuyPower, Origin and others will all be offering small form factor systems powered by the GeForce GTX Titan.
At this point in a new GPU launch
article, we would normally list details of our test bed and dive right
into the performance results. Unfortunately, for those of you that are
itching to see exactly what the GeForce GTX Titan can do, you’ll have to wait just a little while longer.
NVIDIA has asked that we not publish our
performance results for just few more days, but don’t sweat it—the wait
will be worth it—especially if this Crysis 3 download finishes on time.
In the meantime, here’s a video NVIDIA has put together announcing the
GeForce GTX Titan. After geeking out over the last few pages, this
little teaser should get you fired up all over again.
The GeForce GTX Titan should be available
immediately from many of NVIDIA’s key system partners, with limited
retail availability to follow. As you probably expect, pricing is going
to be relatively high and will fall into the same range as the dual-GPU
powered GeForce GTX 690. Whether or not you consider the GTX Titan
worthy of consideration will depend on your budget and the card’s
performance relatively to competing offerings. We’ll paint the complete
picture soon enough, but one thing is for certain: the GeForce GTX Titan
will easily be the most powerful single-GPU powered graphics card
available and its high-end construction, new features, quiet operation,
and ability to work in a wide range of form factors make it all the
more interesting.
To be continued...
Update: GeForce GTX Titan performance review available here.
To be continued...
Update: GeForce GTX Titan performance review available here.
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