Nvidia Titan X Pascal Review - The Fastest Consumer GPU Available

For the original German review, see here.

The Nvidia Titan X can be bought only via the Nvidia web store. Thus, there will not be any custom designs or cards from other manufacturers. It looks significantly different compared to Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Founder's Edition. The cooler, which appears to be top-quality, is entirely black. In addition to a 6-pin power-in, it features an 8-pin one in order to supply the graphics card with sufficient energy. The label of the cooler (TITAN X) hints at the top model again. On the side, there is a striking "GEFORCE GTX" logo, which glows green when it is on. We do not fully understand why Nvidia uses this logo in the Titan X, since the Titan X is not officially listed as GeForce GTX graphics card in the portfolio.

This feature is indeed an eye catcher and a gimmick. However, those who buy a graphics card of this price category might want you to see even from a distance that it is not just a conventional "GeForce GTX" graphics card.

The available interfaces are identical to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Founder's Edition's. Hence, the Nvidia Titan X also features Dual-Link-DVI, an HDMI 2.0 port as well as three Display-Port-1.4 ports. An SLI interface allows combining two of the graphic cards for further increasing the performance.

Obviously, the actual performance in games has much more significance. After we ran all the games in our benchmark list from 2015 and 2016 on the Nvidia Titan X, we can say with certainty that all current games run smoothly in 4K with a "high preset". There are often still reserves, so that the Nvidia Titan X can even cope with "ultra preset" at a resolution of 3840x2160 pixels.

At lower resolutions, the combination with a higher clocked CPU is often the better choice. The lack of multi-core support ensures that the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 as well as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 perform better in FHD resolution than the Intel Xeon E5 2680v4 with the Nvidia Titan X. This changes with increasing the resolution, so that the Titan X can often be outperformed only by multi GPU systems in UHD resolution. Even if you ignore the price performance ratio, this GPU only makes sense when you want to run games with resolutions above 1080p and a correspondingly high preset.

We decided to use a compatible water cooler from EKWB with suitable backplate. You have to first remove the original backplate, which exposes all the screws connecting the cooler and PCB. Once you have removed these twenty screws, you can carefully take off the cooler. However, you have to be very careful: The cooling unit is also fixed to the PCB with two cables at the rear. Once you have disconnected these, you can finally remove the entire cooling unit (see pictures).

Before installing the new cooler, you have to remove all remnants of thermal grease and the thermal pads. This is easily done with a little alcohol, a dust-free cloth or a few cotton buds. The scope of delivery of the water cooler includes all suitable thermal pads in the right size. You have to put them on the right components and spread the included thermal grease on the GPU. Now, you can carefully lay the full cover water cooler on the card, which is fixed to the PCB with suitable screws. The same applies to the backplate.

We have deliberately ignored the price performance ratio since a price of 1299 Euros (~$1446), which Nvidia charges for their consumer range flagship, cannot be called reasonable at all. Nevertheless, buyers who are looking for something special and are also willing to pay for it, might consider buying it. However, an extra charge of 500 Euros (~$557) compared with the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Founder's Edition is not reasonable since it bears no relation to the performance gain. In the meanwhile, there are many partner cards with the GTX 1080 chip, which bring even more performance due to factory-set overclocking.

Those who really dare to buy an Nvidia Titan X (Pascal), should consider implementing a water cooling circuit. With it, the Titan X will live longer thanks to lower waste heat.

If we judge the performance without considering the price, Nvidia offers the fastest single GPU so far with the Titan X. Only multi GPU systems consisting of two Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 are able to beat the Titan X. However, the Titan X performs better if SLI support is missing. Those who follow rumors will notice that the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti might be released in the coming months. The Internet site www.fudzilla.com mentions CES 2017 as possible release date. The technical specifications are supposed to be similar to the Titan X, but the GTX 1080 Ti will only feature 3328 CUDA cores (96 ROPs/208 TMUs). The GPU core frequency will be slightly increased compared to the Titan X (1503 MHz, Boost 1623 MHz). The price of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will be in between the non-Ti model and the test model.

Who would be interested in this graphics card? Certainly the gamers. But those who still want to run games in FHD or WQHD in the near future might also be satisfied with the performance of Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070. Currently, the Titan X only makes sense if demanding games are supposed to run in UHD and with suitable quality settings (high/ultra preset) without stuttering.