Geforce 690 duo vs quad titans

Alec Bramlett

Honorable
Oct 11, 2013
175
0
10,710
I heard from a friend that 2 Gtx 690's in a SLI configuration are more powerful than 4 Gtx Titans in a SLI configuration, I was very doubtful but he had someone back up his answer. Was he Right
 
Solution
Well, the quad Titans would destroy dual 690's in pure processing power, however the scaling on 4 Titans is awful in the majority of games. So in a real world application (such as a game), the 690 may yield higher framerates. But honestly, quad SLI is a bad idea with any card, as the scaling is usually terrible for the price you pay, and they run SO hot if they are not water cooled. This shows a pretty good representation:

http://us.hardware.info/reviews/4031/nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan-3-way4-way-sli-review-incl-5760x1080-and-frametimes

As you can see, in some games the titans are faster. In others, the 690 SLI is faster.
Well, the quad Titans would destroy dual 690's in pure processing power, however the scaling on 4 Titans is awful in the majority of games. So in a real world application (such as a game), the 690 may yield higher framerates. But honestly, quad SLI is a bad idea with any card, as the scaling is usually terrible for the price you pay, and they run SO hot if they are not water cooled. This shows a pretty good representation:

http://us.hardware.info/reviews/4031/nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan-3-way4-way-sli-review-incl-5760x1080-and-frametimes

As you can see, in some games the titans are faster. In others, the 690 SLI is faster.
 
Solution

grebgonebad

Distinguished
Seeing as a single GTX 690 is already running 2x GK104 chips in SLI....
4x Titans will definitely be faster than 2x GTX 690's.

That said, 4x SLI scaling is going to be terrible and I see no real world use for having 4x Titans or 2x GTX 690's.
If you have more money laying around than you can stand, stick with 2x Titans and you will do fine.
 

grebgonebad

Distinguished


Actually, scaling on 2 690's is just as bad. The onyl benefit really to the 690 is that it uses less power and produces less overall heat than 2 cards in SLI.

As far as cards running hot is concerned, I wouldnt say they run that hot, especially if you use software such as EVGA Precision X and set a custom fan curve. My 670's hit 85-90C (After OCing) on thier stock fan settings, but with a custom fan curve they dont go over 70C. =)

But agreed, quad SLI scaling is, for the most part, quite poor. I would much rather have 2-way SLI, at a push 3-way.
 


Those benchmarks are for single card benchmarks. Once you start putting multiple Titans together, the scaled performance drops significantly. You cannot look at single card benchmarks and just double the numbers to make a claim. In an ideal world, in which drivers are updated to support quad SLI in every game, then maybe. But in this world, those benchmarks are entirely irrelevant.
 


I think the part where the OP's friend, and possibly you are missing, is a single 690 has two 680's on a single board in SLI. Two of them is the same as having 4 680's in 4-way SLI.

So the question can be just as easily be posed as, "What is faster, 4-way 680 SLI (underclocked) or 4-way Titan SLI?"

I think we all know the answer to that.

EDIT:
And if you still don't believe the above, here is some benchmarks with 690 SLI compared to 3-way Titan. Even in 3-way, Titan beats 690 SLI.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-titan-performance-review,3442-9.html
bf3-average-sli.png

border-average-sli.png
 

grebgonebad

Distinguished


I know that you cant simply double a single cards performance to get 2 way performance, in reality you expect about an extra 70-80% perforamnce. But even so, the Titan is still the leader in terms of performance. And game benchmarks also shopw that 4 Titans are still better than 2 690's.

Scaling will be poor for both dual 690's and quad Titans, because as you say, SLI profiles simply arent optimised enough for quad SLI at the minute. probably for the same reasons that most games dint utilise more than a couple of cores in a CPU. I would suspect though that with multi-core CPU's and SLI setups becoming even mroe common, new games releases are going to steadily become more and more optimised.