Nvidia’s GTX Titan: What it means for the future of PC gaming and AMD


Nvidia’s GTX Titan: What it means for the future of PC gaming and AMD

GTX TitanNvidia’s GTX Titan officially launches today. We covered the chip’s announcement a few days ago and are still working on in-depth project that explores Titan’s capabilities more fully than standard FPS numbers would indicate. For now, though, we’ll explore Titan’s impact on the graphics market and PC gaming itself. This is a graphics card that’s going to get a lot of people excited. It’s impressive, even if its $1000 price point is far out of reach for most consumers.
The rise of multi-monitor gaming, the increasing popularity of so-called “second screens,” and the advent of cards like Titan — which can push multiple displays without breaking a sweat — are all parts of the same trend. At a time when game development costs are skyrocketing, developers are looking to create more immersive experience. The idea of 3D gaming is all but dead — but multi-screen gaming, in some form, has more momentum behind it.
With the PS4 now officially announced and set to make a debut at the end of the year, Nvidia will undoubtedly position the Titan as the high-end enthusiast’s card of choice, even if AMD manufacturers the GPU inside all three of the new consoles.

Did Nvidia win the GPU design war?

For Nvidia, today’s Titan launch will be viewed as vindicating the company’s long-term vision for GPU design. For the past six years, Nvidia and AMD have pursued different strategies for their respective graphics chips — and for most of that time AMD was judged to have the upper hand.
AMD's "new" GPU strategy
In mid-2008, AMD announced a new strategy for itself. Rather than building monolithic GPUs with ever-increasing core counts and a focus on top-end performance, AMD declared that it would target the midrange of the market with its single-GPU products. The company’s top-end cards would consist of two GPUs on a single PCB.
Die sizes - AMD vs Nvidia through 2009
Die sizes – AMD vs. Nvidia through 2009
AMD’s HD 4000 series walloped Nvidia’s GT200 family as far as price/performance ratio. Nvidia made the 65nm-55nm transition from 2008 to 2009, but the high-end HD 4870 and HD 4850 debuted on 55nm in the summer of 2008. Opting for a smaller, less-complicated die had paid off.
It paid off again in 2009 when the HD 5000 family launched. Again, Nvidia was left gasping; the company’s own GTX 480 was delayed for months. The GF110 (GTX 580) narrowed the gap between Team Red and Green, the HD 7000 family briefly grabbed the performance crown for AMD once more… and then Kepler happened.
If GK104 (GTX 680) was an excellent example of what Kepler could do when Nvidia emphasized game performance over scientific workloads, GK110 (Titan) is proof that the company can build supercomputing products and then integrate those chips at the top of the consumer space.
The problem here isn’t that Nvidia has somehow “won” the GPU market — it’s that Nvidia, not AMD, is now firmly controlling the conversation, and thus the various price points.

0 comments: