The experience: Titan X vs SLI 970's(Longish post)

[Maxxtraxx]

It all started a week ago today. I was perusing the local craigslist posts for any and all computer related components when I came across a listing for a Nvidia Titan X for $450. So I called, got an immediate answer and arranged to pick it up that night. I was excited to say the least and very interested to see how this card performs.

 

My previous setup was a pair of GTX970 G1's that worked  wonderfully for me, they worked hard on witcher 3 at 1440p on my 85hz panel and made for a great experience, steady framerate, and exceptional visuals for that masterpiece of a game. The G1's ran at 1530mhz with a 25mv voltage bump all day with no memory overclock and temperatures that were 63c and 73c for the bottom and top cards and operation that was far more silent than my corsair SP120's that came with the h100i GTX. To make it short, they have served me very well.

 

The EVGA Titan X Superclocked comes with the very sharp looking Nvidia reference cooler and no backplate​ but is none the less a very nice looking card. The G1's proceeded to be removed and replaced with this single lone card that is trying its hardest to perform just as well despite having one GPU core, a reference PCB and a few hundred less CUDA cores in total. The first observation that I can offer was the realization at just how much smaller the Cooling fin array on the Titan X was... it was 1/3 the size of the cooling fins on just one of the G1's despite the Titan being a 250w card vs the approx 170w 970's. To say I was skeptical of the cooling capabilities of the Titan was an understatement, I was rightly concerned about it.

 

Finally the card was in, the case had its cable management fixed and I was ready to check out the card's performance. To start the card was a 65% ASIC rating, this concerned me as well, There seems to be endless speculation as to what exactly this will mean for the cards performance there seem to be a few known facts: 1: the chip will need more power(compared to a higher rated chip) 2: the chip will need more voltage(ditto). This speculation seems to have proven true with my card, on the stock cooler the card managed a 100mhz core bump with the power limit maxed out and that also lead to noticeable thermal throttling with the card almost immediately jumping to 85c and staying there with the cooler doing its best and the clock frequency adjusting down to help hold the temperature down. My first impressions were left with a card that is very pretty to look at, very hot, very noisy and a very poor overclocker all of which are the opposite of what I had come from with my 970's.

 

Here is a 3dMark Comparison: 970's Overclocked vs. Titan X

 

As great as a Titan X is, it just wasn't keeping up with the 970's in both performance and the amount of noise it produced, but I was resolved to keep the Titan due to 1: I own it now and 2: I was at my graphics card limit, my Z97 system can't handle a 3rd card which left me with no upgrade path that offered a performance increase for any nonsilly amount of money. This left me with one route that I have never taken before, mod the Titan as much as I was willing.

 

I started by ordering a backplate... and EVGA(and amazon) was on backorder for the Titan X, but the 980Ti backplate is identical save for the writing on it so that was gotten instead. Second I ordered a EVGA Hybrid cooler... which for the Titan X costs $10 more than for the 980Ti despite being the exact same product with different labeling so I again ended up with a 980Ti cooler. Third, a bios flash for the card to enable a higher power limit and give some overclocking headroom. I ended up reading some very good articles on the process using nvflash and found what looked to be a well regarded BIOS for the card and ended up with the GM200-ULTIMATE-1281mv.rom​.

 

First the Bios update; it went smoothly after some minor hand holding via reading the descriptions in the forum posts to use the cmd prompt. This update being 2 days before the new cooler arrived I decided to run a quick comparison from stock bios to the new overclocking bios... and wow, with the stock cooler installed the performance actually dropped due to the severe thermal throttling with the significantly higher core voltage being used. The results didn't surprise me and I was content to not use the card for any gaming for the 2 days until the new cooler arrived.

 

And finally, the cooler and backplate arrived today in the mail. After cleaning the kitchen before my wife got home and putting my son to bed I commandeered the kitchen table and set to work disassembling the Titan as well as installing 2 Fractal Venturi HP-12 to replace my LOUD Corsair SP-120's on the H100i. The installation went smooth, the instructions from EVGA were very good for both the Hybrid cooler and the Backplate with excellent illustrations that only left me unsure about 1 minor cable routing step and what some of the seemingly unneeded extras in the package were(little washers, teeny tiny velcro tape, ect). With everything back together the lovely Define R5 was crammed back into her cubby hole and started up. The initial noise that came out of the cooler caught me off guard a bit as I was initially worried due to the grindy noise being emanated that the pump power wire was touching the blower fan. My worries were quickly calmed as the noise transitioned into a bubbly pump bleeding off air sound that lasted for a few minutes. It was immediately apparent that the temperatures were better, where before the change the card was idling at approx 40c and was now idling at 29c with a drastic reduction in noise already.

 

The next step was to begin some Firestrike runs and see what happens, the inital run was a real revelation as instead of immediately hitting 85c and screaming at me, this time the card slowly inched up in temperature and leveled off in the low 50c range all at just base card settings. After approx 1 hour of running firestrike and slowly turning up the Core frequency I started to hit the ceiling at around 1,500Mhz(+500Mhz on the slider) with a core voltage of 1.274v, being happy with 1,500 I took my easiest stable core clock and began turning up the memory and stopped at 3,911Mhz (+400Mhz) before deciding to write this little(big?) topic to share my thoughts on the whole process and to get any input from others.

 

The improvement from start to finish has gone from: Stock to current Overclock

 

So while still not quite matching the 970's in a synthetic benchmark, the ultimate result is real in game performance that is equivalent with more stable fps that also leaves room for SLI in the future and removes any VRam worries as well as both of my 970's being sold on ebay for $275 each to cover the cost of the card as well as the cooler and backplate.

[connorpiper]

I experienced the same things when moving from OC'd GTX760s to a GTX 980.

Benchmarks lower, games higher. 

[The Official Czex]

Now that's what I call an upgrade!

[byalexandr]

$450 for a Titan X? Wish I could snag up a deal like that.

[MegaDave91]

The ram modules on the underside of the card get alarmingly hot; so much that it's nearly cause for concern. You can easily burn yourself in <2 seconds.

 

@Lays and I benched our cards (his OC970 SLI and my OC Titan X) and the results were as you experienced. An overclocked Titan X is faster than stock 970 SLI though.

 

Nice write up though; I have to give you a like for at least that.

[Lays]

The ram modules on the underside of the card get alarmingly hot; so much that it's nearly cause for concern. You can easily burn yourself in <2 seconds.

 

@Lays and I benched our cards (his OC970 SLI and my OC Titan X) and the results were as you experienced. An overclocked Titan X is faster than stock 970 SLI though.

 

Nice write up though; I have to give you a like for at least that.

 

 

U want to bench again? I'm buying a 980 TI Matrix tomorrow morning.

 

It should be here next week or so.

[MegaDave91]

U want to bench again? I'm buying a 980 TI Matrix tomorrow morning.

 

It should be here next week or so.

Holy shit yes! I'm so happy for you.

[Lays]

Holy shit yes! I'm so happy for you.

 

I was going to buy the 80% Kingpin but the Matrix got released on pre-order for $710, I can't pass that up