As we’ve already concluded, Nvidia’s Titan X is the best single-GPU graphics card on the market. Of course, there exists a myriad of talking points and nuanced analysis that must be explored before the majority of us even consider plunking down $1000 for any addition to our rig. Over the course of this review we’ll focus on things like synthetic and gaming benchmarks at 4K (3840 x 2160) resolution, aesthetics, the competitive landscape, performance uplift over cards like the GTX 980, and the advantages and disadvantages of single and dual (SLI/CrossFire) GPU graphics solutions. That’s all necessary because despite it being the best single-GPU card in existence, there’s no simple, blanket answer to the question: “Is the Titan X worth my money?”

A Brief History of the Titan

Nvidia introduced the original Titan in February 2013 with a monster price tag ($999) and monster gaming performance. It was marketed as the ultimate gaming card, but also catered to researchers, engineers, and developers who wanted an entry-level compute card as opposed to the much more expensive Tesla.

In our PC gaming world, the Titan helped popularize the concept of micro-tower gaming powerhouses like Falcon Northwest’s Tiki. I still remember being utterly stunned at the benchmarks it cranked out. In May 2013 I lived in a world where a rig with a cubic volume of only 715 inches could produce results like 60fps on Crysis 3 — on High, and at 1080p! It wasn’t just the performance, it was the fact that a $1000 card with 6GB of VRAM could crank that out in a case the size of an Xbox One without sounding like a leaf blower or melting your face off.

The 2014 followup, Titan Black, suffered a bit of an identity problem. It was effectively a GTX 780Ti with double the VRAM (from 3GB to 6GB) and double-precision computer enabled for the aforementioned researcher/engineer/developer crowd. It retained its $999 price tag, making it several hundred dollars more expensive than the 780Ti. Nvidia didn’t even send press samples of the Titan Black to major tech outlets, probably because for gamers, it didn’t justify its price tag.

Enter Titan-Z, the red-headed but superhuman stepchild of the Titan family. It featured 5,760 cores, 12GB (6GB x2) of 7Gb/s GDDR5 memory, and a heart-stopping price tag of $3000. It was heavy, it needed to exhaust a ton of waste heat, and it set my hardware lust into overdrive. Shockingly, Falcon Northwest engineered another miracle by cramming this dual-GPU Titan into the Tiki once again. You can read my review of that here. It was a life-changing and kinda life-affirming moment, but its asking price was insane, especially next to AMD’s Radeon 295×2, a direct competitor that was liquid cooled and cost half as much.

Meet The Titan X

Photo by Jason Evangelho

Back to 2015, and the Titan X completely restores the Titan’s identity. It’s built on Nvidia’s proven Maxwell architecture and doubles the GDDR5 Video RAM to an astounding 12GB. Nvidia is marketing it directly at the “ultra enthusiast,” the person who wants to game at 4K resolution and still enjoy playable framerates without compromising on graphics quality.

Most of my readers tend to care less about the billions of transistors or memory bandwidth speed and more about performance and a certain level of future-proofing. Especially with a $1000 investment, right? We’ll get to performance shortly, but it needs to be said: The Titan X isn’t going to be obsolete anytime soon. Any fears you could possibly have about higher resolutions and extreme textures defeating this card’s 12GB framebuffer? Throw them away. In an admittedly ridiculous experiment, I ran Crysis 3 maxed out, Tomb Raider maxed out, Heaven 4.0 on maximum settings, and 3DMark’s Fire Strike Ultra test. All at 4K. Simultaneously. I got it up to 9.6GB. I think we’re safe.

The Competitive Landscape

The obvious competitor to the Titan Z — based on performance and price — is AMD’s Radeon 295×2, a liquid-cooled dual GPU card that found AMD rectifying some of their thermal mistakes and delivering a compelling price/performance ratio. Even when it launched at $1499, it stood alone. Nowit’s hovering around $700.

Yesterday I suggested that if cost is no obstacle and you want the best single-GPU card on the market, that you should buy the Titan X. I’ll twist that argument here to one of pure performance. Because the Radeon 295×2 still beats the Titan X overall. And it does so for roughly $279 less. Then again, it’s a dual-GPU product that requires more space than Titan X, as well as the installation (albeit a simple one) of an included radiator.

Nvidia’s own GTX 980 (starting at $549) certainly figures into this discussion depending on your needs and wants. Same for AMD’s Radeon 290x, which is far and away the card offering the best performance per dollar right.

So again, those nuances become important in the overall recommendation. We’ll explore those further in a moment, but let’s get to the benchmarks!