NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X Review: Efficient, Powerful
The GeForce GTX Titan X
Like all of NVIDIA’s high-end graphics cards from the past few generations, the new GeForce GTX Titan is outfitted with a heavy-duty cooler with frames and plates made of aluminum to add rigidity. Unlike the GeForce GTX 980, however, the Titan X does NOT feature a backplate. NVIDIA tells us the additional space consumed by the backplate is detrimental to cooling performance in multi-GPU configurations, so they did away with it on the Titan X.
As you probably expect by now, the GeForce logo along the top edge of the card also lights up and there is an embossed badge at the front of the fan shroud with the card's name. For the most part, the Titan X looks much like the GeForce GTX 980 and older 700-series cards, save for the all-black paint job, of course.
The actual cooling hardware on the cards consists of a large vapor chamber with a densely packed, nickel-plated aluminum finstack, and a large, rear-mounted barrel-type fan with user-adjustable fan curves. Like NVIDIA’s previous-gen flagships, the Titan X also uses low-profile components on about the front 65% of the PCB around the GPU. The card’s cooler has a flat, ducted baseplate for unobstructed airflow, which minimizes turbulence and helps quiet down and better cool the card. The chokes used in the Titan X are also epoxy coated, which help minimize the whine and buzz sometimes heard when a graphics card is under load.
There is a window cut into the fan shroud that shows off the finstack (under a sheet of Lexan), and due to the fan configuration, virtually all of the heat produced by the card is exhausted from the system. Cards with centrally mounted axial-type fans, expel some of the heated air from the system, but dump the rest back into the case.
As evidenced by the pair of SLI edge connectors at the top of the card, the GeForce GTX Titan supports up to 4-Way SLI, and because the TDP of the card is only 250 watts, one 6-pin and one 8-pin supplemental PCI Express power feeds are all that are required to power the card. We should note that the Titan X has a power balancing feature that allows the card to direct power from whichever feeds have headroom, when under load. The card receives power from three sources—the two supplemental PCIe feeds and the PCIe slot itself. Should one become overloaded when overclocking, for example, power can be utilized from one of the other feeds, if it’s available.
Outputs on the reference cards consist of a pair of a single dual-link DVI output, three full-sized DisplayPort outputs, and an HDMI connector—four of which can be utilized at any given time. The GeForce GTX Titan X has enough horsepower to push multiple displays simultaneously, and as such, it supports NVIDIA's 3D Vision Surround technology. Like other GTX-class GPUs, the Titan X is ready for NVIDIA’s G-Sync technology as well.
As evidenced by the pair of SLI edge connectors at the top of the card, the GeForce GTX Titan supports up to 4-Way SLI, and because the TDP of the card is only 250 watts, one 6-pin and one 8-pin supplemental PCI Express power feeds are all that are required to power the card. We should note that the Titan X has a power balancing feature that allows the card to direct power from whichever feeds have headroom, when under load. The card receives power from three sources—the two supplemental PCIe feeds and the PCIe slot itself. Should one become overloaded when overclocking, for example, power can be utilized from one of the other feeds, if it’s available.
