Hardware Award
EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN
RRP: $999.99 | Website: www.evga.com
Test Machine
• INTEL Core i7 3770K
• GIGABYTE Z77X-UP5TH
• CORSAIR Dominator
Platinum 2x4GB DDR
2666MHZ CL10
• OCZ Vertex 4 512GB SSD
• Cooler Master Silent Pro M2
1500W
• Windows 7 64-bit SP1 (FW
314.14)
O
k, so here’s the deal
with the GTX TITAN. It’s
expensive; absurdly so
but then again, if you have the
highest performing product on
the market, you can effectively
charge anything you desire.
So by now you’re all probably
aware of what it is that makes
the TITAN tick. It’s essentially
the compute part that came in
the form of the K20, but now
made available to desktop users
or power users rather for their
gaming purposes.
With a totally of 6GB of
memory, one can safely say
that there isn’t a resolution or
12 The OverClocker Issue 24 | 2013
configuration that this graphics
card cannot support. Do we need
6GB of memory at present on a
graphics card? No, of course not,
but when you’re paying $1,000
for an accelerator it best have all
the bells and whistles. Having
said that we can’t help but think,
perhaps a better PCB and cooler
would have done the trick even
if it meant sticking with just 3GB
of memory. This is simple to
observe especially in our testing
where we found that cooling
the TITAN increased clock
speeds significantly allowing
you to squeeze out even more
performance from the card. We
also found out that, the 6-phase
PWM isn’t actually enough to
allow extreme overclockers to
push this card to its very limits.
For that you’ll need the EVGA
E-Power VRM board. Given that
it’s a $100, you can tell just how
expensive overclocking the GTX
TIITAN can be.
However, even if you have the
E-Power, you’ll not only need
some impressive electronics
skills to get it working, you’ll
effectively void your warranty
and risk one of the most
expensive graphics cards
ever made. Should you not be
deterred by any of this and
provided you get it right, you
should find yourself on the top
20 lists on HWBOT in almost
every single 3D Benchmark.
More over you’ll not be under
threat of an HD7970 toppling
your score due to some
tweaking, as there’s nothing an
HD7970 can do against a fully
modified GTX TITAN.
With that said, it is important
to note that you’re also going
to perhaps need a special
BIOS which up until recently
wasn’t easily available. This
is effectively the extreme
overclocking BIOS which was
only available to a few before.
Never fear though, as HWBHOT
has the BIOS hosted and you can
simply grab it there. We must
however warn you, that use of
the BIOS is not supported or
condoned by NVIDIA, EVGA or
any other vendor for that matter.
Using it will most certainly
void your warranty and expose
your card to risks that will