The NVIDIA Titan V Preview - Titanomachy: War of the Titans
by Ryan Smith & Nate Oh on December 20, 2017 11:30 AM ESTGaming Performance
Sure, compute is useful. But be honest: you came here for the 4K gaming benchmarks, right?
Already after Battlefield 1 (DX11) and Ashes (DX12), we can see that Titan V is not a monster gaming card, though it still is faster than Titan Xp. This is not unexpected, as Titan V's focus is quite far away from gaming as opposed to the focus of the previous Titan cards.
Despite being generally ahead of Titan Xp, it's clear Titan V is suffering from lack of gaming optimization. And for that matter, the launch drivers definitely have bugs in them as far as gaming is concerned. Titan V on Deus Ex resulted in small black box artifacts during the benchmark; Ghost Recon Wildlands experienced sporadic but persistant hitching, and Ashes occasionally suffered from fullscreen flickering.
And despite the impressive 3-digit FPS in the Vulkan-powered DOOM, the card actually falls behind Titan Xp in 99th percentile framerates. For such high average framerates, even a 67fps 99th percentile can reduce perceived smoothness. Meanwhile, running Titan V under DX12 for Deus Ex and Total War: Warhammer resulted in less performance. But with immature gaming drivers, it is too early to say if these are representative of low-level API performance on Volta itself.
Overall, the Titan V averages out to around 15% faster than the Titan Xp, excluding 99th percentiles, but with the aforementioned caveats. Titan V's high average FPS in DOOM and Deus Ex are somewhat marred by stagnant 99th percentiles and minor but noticable artifacting, respectively.
So as a pure gaming card, our preview results indicate that this would not the best gaming purchase at $3000. Typically, a $1800 premium for around 10 - 20% faster gaming over the Titan Xp wouldn't be enticing, but it seems there are always some who insist.
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jjj - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
Bah but this is last week's Titan, aren't they launching a new one this week?WorldWithoutMadness - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Titan A, next week Titan G, next 2 weeks Titan I, next month Titan N, and lastly Titan ASshowster - Saturday, December 23, 2017 - link
*Slow Clap*Luscious - Wednesday, December 27, 2017 - link
Don't forget the dual Volta Titan ZZmode_13h - Wednesday, December 27, 2017 - link
...in case anyone wondered why they never released Pascal as Titan P. I guess Nvidia knows their market too well for that.mode_13h - Wednesday, December 27, 2017 - link
Well, they'll presumably release the GV102 in some more affordable flavor of Titan. Titan V0?And maybe they'll eventually release a GV100 in a PCIe card with all four HBM2 stacks... although that'll probably receive Quadro branding & price point, like the Quadro GP100.
mode_13h - Tuesday, January 30, 2018 - link
So, after Titan Xp and Titan V(ista), next should be Titan 7. That's a definite buy, but I'd skip Titan 8. Maybe go for Titan 8.1, or just hold out for Titan 10.CajunArson - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
OK, while I agree that nobody should buy a Titan V for gaming you say: "Already after Battlefield 1 (DX11) and Ashes (DX12), we can see that Titan V is not a monster gaming card, though it still is faster than Titan Xp. "Uh... yeah that's wrong. Anything that's faster than a Titan XP *is* a monster gaming card by definition. It's just not a very good purchase for $3000 since it's not really targeted towards gaming.
nathanddrews - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
I agree with this. Cost aside - it's the best gaming card on the market. Unless NVIDIA launches the 1180/2080/whatever80 soon, this card will be in Terry Crews' Old Spice rig by the end of the month.P-P-P-POWWWWERRRRRRRRRR!
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
"Uh... yeah that's wrong. Anything that's faster than a Titan XP *is* a monster gaming card by definition."The big issue right now is that it's not consistently faster, especially at the 99th percentile Or for that matter, not as bug-free as it needs to be.
I'm going to be surprised if it doesn't get better with later drivers. But for the moment, even if you throw out the price, it's kind of janky in games.