In the event you’ve ever questioned how a very previous flagship graphics card may carry out with up to date PC video games, nicely, marvel not – we now have a solution to that poser.
The GPU in query is the unique Nvidia GTX Titan, launched in 2013, and retested 11 years down the road by PC Video games {Hardware} (a German web site, by way of Tom’s {Hardware}).
This was a flagship constructed on Nvidia’s Kepler structure, and the primary graphics card to shoot up in worth to hit the thousand-buck mark within the US (and consistent with that elsewhere), which precipitated various raised eyebrows on the time as you may think about.
For that cash, it sported 2,688 cores, 6GB of VRAM, and a whopping 876MHz increase clock (sure, this was a very long time in the past).
So, how does the unique GTX Titan carry out now? Badly, is the brief reply.
The marginally longer reply is {that a} large a part of the wonkiness right here is that the GTX Titan doesn’t run many trendy video games – in any respect. Primarily as a result of the software program aspect of the equation has moved on a lot since 2013, and the Titan lacks assist for up to date options.
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Certainly, the Titan was launched earlier than DirectX 12 even got here out, so it requires software program emulation to assist DX12 titles, and that in itself is a spanner within the efficiency works, as you may think (in comparison with hardware-level assist).
It’s not just like the GTX Titan can’t run any up to date video games, although, however even in these circumstances, PC Video games {Hardware} found efficiency ranges that have been distinctly missing.
To take a high-profile instance, Cyberpunk 2077 labored, however the Titan may solely obtain 12 frames per second (fps), and that’s with out ray tracing (which clearly isn’t supported by the previous GPU anyway).
Some much less taxing video games may run at first rate body charges, thoughts, like Diablo 4 which acquired near 50 fps, a easy expertise. Most titles that labored, although, have been below 30 fps, or may solely nearly attain that stage (which is thought to be the naked minimal for a satisfactory body fee).
Overclocking the Titan to 1,250MHz (a serious increase) did assist, although, and meant that Management (not a very new sport, it needs to be famous) may very well be run at 33 fps for instance (higher than the 25 fps witnessed at default clock speeds). On the entire, although, this was a distinctly underwhelming efficiency for a grand’s price of GPU.
Evaluation: Trash of the Titan – however what did you count on?
It might need been a grand’s price of GPU, however we nonetheless must do not forget that the GTX Titan is over a decade previous – fairly historical in tech chronology. Is it any shock that the Titan does fairly badly with cutting-edge video games, and even these that are a couple of years previous? In no way, frankly.
As we’ve already touched on, there’s much more to a graphics card than its uncooked spec. To not say that this isn’t vital, nevertheless it’s not simply concerning the {hardware} getting older, however the GPU falling behind in software program and driver developments (and sport optimizations) to compound the distress. To not point out lacking tech like upscaling (DLSS).
It’s attention-grabbing to see, nonetheless, simply how far behind the GTX Titan has fallen, and have this laid out naked with some benchmarks displaying even AMD’s lowly RX 6400, as a up to date comparability, beat the previous Nvidia flagship in three-quarters of video games examined (at inventory clocks, thoughts).
All of this begs the apparent query: how will the much more costly RTX 4090 fare a decade after its launch? (Sidenote: It’s telling how we are able to reminisce a couple of time when flagship GPUs have been ‘solely’ a thousand bucks – though the GTX Titan nearly doubled the price of a top-of-the-line board when it emerged, so it began this unlucky pattern, actually).
Properly, we don’t know the reply to that, however we’re guessing the Lovelace flagship will stay extra related when 2032 rolls round, however it’s going to clearly nonetheless be old-fashioned. Our reasoning for why the 4090 will fare considerably higher? Properly, we are able to have a look at how the likes of the GTX 1080 Ti have aged, which is now seven years out, and remains to be doing okay in case you dial again settings at 1080p decision.
Curiously, one other German web site, Computerbase, just lately carried out a comparability of older mid-range GPUs to up to date fashions, and the GTX 1070 fared fairly – although it was nonetheless 10% slower than an RTX 3050 (8GB) and clearly lacked newer options like DLSS.
Not even one of many greatest graphics playing cards of the previous goes to carry out all that nicely on the decade-old mark, thoughts you, however the RTX 4090 is more likely to make a greater fist of issues than the unique Titan.
