Titan X: Scam or Mistake?

[cptmold]

Here we are, with the release of the GTX 980ti... a card that matches the Titan X in everything but VRAM, but for $350 less. The question is... what about all the people who bought into Titan X?

The closest situation we had to this was the last Titan against the 780 lineup, but in the end, the Titan still proved its worth as a video editor with both 6GB of VRAM and great gaming performance. It stomped out the other 700 series cards in the field of video editing, so it wasn't really a problem.

Now here we are, with the three-month old Titan X obsolete. If you remember, this was marketed towards the entusiast gamers' market. It doesn't have any real advantages in video editing, other than an extra 6GB of VRAM (for $350). For the gamers who bought in, they'll find that most games don't even go far beyond 3GB, and 6GB is a limit practically nothing has crossed.

So, what do you think? Was it a clever marketing ploy by Nvidia to make a quick buck, was it an oversight during the development of 980ti, or was it not meant to affect the market this way? If you want to go full AMD fanboy... cool it, this isn't the YouTube comment section. Keep it clean.

 

[bystander]

Titan X is not marketed towards normal customers. It is a Halo product, and if you buy one, you are doing so knowing something nearly as good is coming down the road soon. And the 980 Ti is not equal to the Titan X, but it is really close.

If the cost matters to you, you just do not buy a Titan product.

 

[cptmold]

Titan X is not marketed towards normal customers. It is a Halo product, and if you buy one, you are doing so knowing something nearly as good is coming down the road soon. And the 980 Ti is not equal to the Titan X, but it is really close.

If the cost matters to you, you just do not buy a Titan product.

Fair enough, I could see that at the pricerange. Still, I'm not sure that Nvidia's in the right when they turned around and sold the same card for $350 less. After all, Titan had a lot longer to be the ultimate card, and had insane video editing potential after the 780ti.

 

[bystander]

They can charge anything they want. They have the right to do what ever, they just won't sell very many high priced cards if they did. It's all about a balance. If the Titan line continues to have a new, nearly equal card released fairly soon after its release, you can expect future versions to not get a lot of sales, but there will always be a group who has to buy the latest and greatest, and has the money to do so.

 

[IntelTurtleFan]

The difference is roughly 3% but anyone can charge whatever they want.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

I think Nvidia's idea (in my mind) was initially to make the cost of the 980Ti somewhere in the $750 region and perform even less well than it currently does. I think Nvidia later changed their focus to crushing the AMD upcoming competition because they are worrying that an AMD card that matches the Titan X would be released for $800, so instead they made the 980Ti as good as the Titan X and only $650 to ensure they will beat AMD.