A question about dual-GPU card speeds

[Chaos_Sorcerer]

Looking back at some of AMD and Nvidia's older dual-GPU graphics cards, a question arose....

 

So...the Titan Z was basically two GeForce GTX Titans on a single card. And the 295X2 was essentially two Hawaii 290Xs on a single card with a liquid cooling solution. 

 

So why is the 295X2 faster than the Titan Z? Isn't a Titan basically a 780 Ti with more vRAM? And I thought the 780 Ti was faster than a 290X! Is it because the 295X2 is liquid-cooled while the Titan Z is not? That couldn't possibly account for the significant difference in performance.

[YubinTheBunny]

The titan z is probably slower because they had to clock it down in order to meet thermal and power limits. While AMD was like "F*** that" and decided to put 2 full 290x's in their dual card solution. That's why the r9 295x2 is water cooled probably, and crossfire usually scales better then sli.

[KE2012]

This could also be down to drivers, if I remember rightly Nvidia has awful / no driver support anymore for the GTX 7XX series cards.  

[LeStringMan]

The Titan Z has a lower clockspeed on the gpus than the reference Titan does, and then the 295x2 actually has higher clockspeeds than a reference 290x, and as previously mention Crossfire scales better than SLI.

[TheRandomness]

Drivers. The 780Ti and whole Kepler lineup was nerfed to shit by Nvidia (afaik) and the 290X only got better. 

[Chaos_Sorcerer]

So how does DirectX12 performance between the 290X and 780 Ti compare? How about the Titan Z and 295X2? Just how much faster was the 780 Ti at the time? Any 780 Ti owners?

[79wjd]

1 minute ago, Chaos_Sorcerer said:

So how does DirectX12 performance between the 290X and 780 Ti compare? How about the Titan Z and 295X2? Just how much faster was the 780 Ti at the time? Any 780 Ti owners?

The 290x is better in DX11 and DX12.

 

The Ti wasn't that much faster at the time, but now the 290x is faster due to driver improvements on the AMD front to rectify the mess that they used to have. 

[KE2012]

Just now, Chaos_Sorcerer said:

So how does DirectX12 performance between the 290X and 780 Ti compare? How about the Titan Z and 295X2? Just how much faster was the 780 Ti at the time? Any 780 Ti owners?

I think the 290X eats the 780ti on DirectX12 

[Chaos_Sorcerer]

2 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

The 290x is better in DX11 and DX12.

 

The Ti wasn't that much faster at the time, but now the 290x is faster due to driver improvements on the AMD front to rectify the mess that they used to have. 

Phew...I actually got my 290X used when I built my rig a few weeks back...the guy was charging $40 less than the guy with the 780 Ti, so I decided to go with the 290X. Good thing I did.

[YubinTheBunny]

Also, I forgot to add that the titan Z cost $3000 on launch while the r9 295x2 was half that. Probably one of the worst dollar to performance card I've seen in a while