RTX 2080 vs TITAN Xp - Which one to go with?

[Princess Luna]

Hey hey, I always enjoy hearing out the thoughts of others in here so~

 

I have been assisting a very dear friend of mine to finally upgrade his computer now that he has finished college and got gifted some money from relatives, the old i5 4670K + GTX 780 will give room for a whole brand new system.

 

The whole computer has already been put together and the only thing left missing is the video card and we come down to 2 alternatives he is very into.

 

We can grab a brand new EVGA RTX 2080 XC Black Edition (Cheapest one around) or we can have a second hand nVidia TITAN Xp in Pristine condition, barely used offers 2 months warranty (200 dollars cheaper).

 

In common rasterization the Xp should be faster than the RTX 2080, specially after we replace the Founders Edition cooler for a custom solution which we might afterwards for better overclocking and so on, however we lose RTX features.

 

The Xp has more 'bragging rights' and would look cooler on the computer than just an ordinary RTX 2080.

 

Which one would you go for?

[Constantin]

I would go for the 2080 even if the Titan XP was also brand new!

[MeatFeastMan]

I'd go for the titan xp. There's one big question for me. It's whether you want ray tracing and Vaseline smearing or an extra 4gb vram. I'd pick 4gb VRAM every day of the week and twice on sunday, and then wait for ray tracing and vaseline smearing to be much better when next generation comes along.

[ThePD]

Titan XP, I believe it is a bit faster and if it is cheaper than the money could be put elsewhere.

[TempestCatto]

I'd go for the Titan. By the time RTX is mainstream, you'd be made fun of for owning any 2xxx series cards. I think the Titan will have more value down the road personally.

[Mira Yurizaki]

If this were me and gaming is the most likely use case, I'd get the RTX 2080.

 

I don't feel the extra VRAM would be worthwhile, considering an observation I made some time ago where despite reporting a certain amount of VRAM usage, performance only dropped linearly rather than suddenly with resolution. And we may not even be sure what the interaction is between VRAM and the application is, considering lots of game engines stream assets and stuff.

 

And while the custom cooling would be neat, there's the question of long term impact. Are they going to keep the card until it dies? Is the cooler specifically going to be for the card? I shy away from purely custom jobs because in the long term, I feel they lose their value.

[trevb0t]

Curiosity: Is there somewhere he plans to invest that $200 savings if he goes with the Titan?

Is it going to be consumed by the custom cooling solution?

 

[porina]

I'd lean towards the 2080 as you'd get full warranty (EVGA is one of the better ones), plus I'm a little more optimistic in that with "low end" RT coming in place, any hardware support will help. In some compute tasks (dunno if that'll ever be needed) Turing can offer much better performance over Pascal than gaming performance would suggest.

[MrConcrete04]

25 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Hey hey, I always enjoy hearing out the thoughts of others in here so~

 

I have been assisting a very dear friend of mine to finally upgrade his computer now that he has finished college and got gifted some money from relatives, the old i5 4670K + GTX 780 will give room for a whole brand new system.

 

The whole computer has already been put together and the only thing left missing is the video card and we come down to 2 alternatives he is very into.

 

We can grab a brand new EVGA RTX 2080 XC Black Edition (Cheapest one around) or we can have a second hand nVidia TITAN Xp in Pristine condition, barely used offers 2 months warranty (200 dollars cheaper).

 

In common rasterization the Xp should be faster than the RTX 2080, specially after we replace the Founders Edition cooler for a custom solution which we might afterwards for better overclocking and so on, however we lose RTX features.

 

The Xp has more 'bragging rights' and would look cooler on the computer than just an ordinary RTX 2080.

 

Which one would you go for?

Titan XP is the best card ever

[SenKa]

Is this a Titan Xp as in Titan Pascal? If so, Titan all the way. Titan cards hold their value fantastically well compared to consumer GT/GTX/RTX cards.

 

The titan naming scheme was always stupid, though... There was the Titan X (Maxwell), Titan XP (Maxwell), Titan Xp (Pascal). The capitalization of the P makes a big difference! Though, even the Titan X and XP are fine cards, though power hungry due to the Maxwell architecture.

[Mira Yurizaki]

I want to add, there's also other architectural improvements in Turing like mesh shader support, adaptive shading, and simultaneous FP32 and INT32. It's likely that AMD will also add these to Navi if they didn't already with Vega.

 

While Titan Xp may be the better card now, I'd argue given the above that the RTX 2080 will hold its own in future AAA games.

[ThePD]

3 hours ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

I want to add, there's also other architectural improvements in Turing like mesh shader support, adaptive shading, and simultaneous FP32 and INT32. It's likely that AMD will also add these to Navi if they didn't already with Vega.

 

While Titan Xp may be the better card now, I'd argue given the above that the RTX 2080 will hold its own in future AAA games.

VRAM seems to be an issue with the 2080 at 4K even today when playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Not saying OP is going to play 4K with the card but just saying that titles today seem to bring the 2080 to its knees already.

[Mira Yurizaki]

17 minutes ago, ThePD said:

VRAM seems to be an issue with the 2080 at 4K even today when playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Not saying OP is going to play 4K with the card but just saying that titles today seem to bring the 2080 to its knees already.

Picking at Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the RTX 2080 seems to be fine keeping up with the Titan Xp

 

(from https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/shadow_of_the_tomb_raider_pc_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,7.html)

 

And if we were to argue the GTX 1080 Ti is "close enough" to the Titan Xp's performance then:

(from https://www.techspot.com/review/1701-geforce-rtx-2080/page3.html)

 

(from https://www.legitreviews.com/nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-and-rtx-2080-benchmark-review_207896/8)

 

My belief is that VRAM usage only signifies how much VRAM is reserved for the application to use. It doesn't mean that it needs or uses every single bit during a frame's render time.

 

EDIT: On a side note, when Tech Spot benchmarked Far Cry 5 (https://www.techspot.com/article/1600-far-cry-5-benchmarks/) they reported that on ultra quality settings that VRAM usage is anywhere from 3.5GB to 4.2GB depending on the resolution. And yet the GT 1030 with its 2GB of VRAM manages to perform within the realm of expectation and not just flop over dead because the game used more VRAM than the card has.

Edited March 21, 2019 by Mira Yurizaki

[ThePD]

3 minutes ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

Picking at Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the RTX 2080 seems to be fine keeping up with the Titan Xp

My belief is that VRAM usage only signifies how much VRAM is reserved for the application to use. It doesn't mean that it needs or uses every single bit during a frame's render time.

I can't remember the name of the youtube channel, It was those guys who do all the video game graphic analysis videos. They did a video comparing the performance of Radeon 7 vs a 2080 in that specific title and the card had been experiencing weird frametime spikes. Could of been a driver problem at the time the video was made.

I think you are correct that the VRAM usage is just reserved memory in the event it needed to be used. It was weird because on the Radeon 7, RoTR was reserving around 10.5GB of VRAM.

[Princess Luna]

So many replies, yes he'll be gaming only and doesn't need the GPU for any hardware acceleration as for now.

 

It'll be a GPU for 2560x1080p144hz (yeah odd panel choice but it's what he liked the most) so there's no need for the VRAM in specific.

 

Every one have said very compelling reasons, the 200 bucks savings would likely be to get an AiO or water block for the Xp and isn't going to other hardware as the computer is already finished, being an i7 8700K based system with all the things, SSD+HDD, 16gb RAM and so on.

 

So far he's still leaning more towards the Xp due to the exquisiteness around it but acknowledges the compelling reasons to go with the RTX 2080.

[MeatFeastMan]

1 minute ago, Princess Cadence said:

So many replies, yes he'll be gaming only and doesn't need the GPU for any hardware acceleration as for now.

 

It'll be a GPU for 2560x1080p144hz (yeah odd panel choice but it's what he liked the most) so there's no need for the VRAM in specific.

 

Every one have said very compelling reasons, the 200 bucks savings would likely be to get an AiO or water block for the Xp and isn't going to other hardware as the computer is already finished, being an i7 8700K based system with all the things, SSD+HDD, 16gb RAM and so on.

 

So far he's still leaning more towards the Xp due to the exquisiteness around it but acknowledges the compelling reasons to go with the RTX 2080.

8gb isn't safe at 1440p, just like 6gb doesn't look safe at 1080p. That's why at 1440p I always recommend Vega over stuff like the 2060 and even the 2070, just because it has 8gb but also HBCC to give it a bit more firepower to play with.

 

Yes games aren't really at 8gb at 1440p yet, but recent games are getting close. 2 years down the line and we'll start seeing significant stutters.

 

Don't risk it. Titan XP is a much better option, even if it is used. Radeon VII is another you should consider alongside the 2080 and titan.

[fabarati]

4 hours ago, SenpaiKaplan said:

Is this a Titan Xp as in Titan Pascal? If so, Titan all the way. Titan cards hold their value fantastically well compared to consumer GT/GTX/RTX cards.

 

The titan naming scheme was always stupid, though... There was the Titan X (Maxwell), Titan XP (Maxwell), Titan Xp (Pascal). The capitalization of the P makes a big difference! Though, even the Titan X and XP are fine cards, though power hungry due to the Maxwell architecture.

There was the Titan X (Maxwell), then the Titan X (Pascal, the internet just started calling it the Titan XP to keep things clear), and then when the 1080ti was just a tad bit faster than the XP, Nvidia refreshed it as the Titan Xp (now with an official p™) so that the Titan line was faster.

 

The naming scheme is still stupid, though.

[SenKa]

4 hours ago, fabarati said:

There was the Titan X (Maxwell), then the Titan X (Pascal, the internet just started calling it the Titan XP to keep things clear), and then when the 1080ti was just a tad bit faster than the XP, Nvidia refreshed it as the Titan Xp (now with an official p™) so that the Titan line was faster.

 

The naming scheme is still stupid, though.

So confusing I messed it up XP