Nvidia’s TitanZ for GPU rendering (through the eyes of Octane Render user)

Among other news in GTC’14 new card released by Nvidia – TitanZ is up in the air in the hands of Jen-Hsun (co-founder,  president and CEO of Nvidia).

nvidias_Titan_Z_GTC_2014

 

I can’t help myself just appreciate the sheer beauty of it. Check this video official Titan Z anouncement video. Also You can take a look to full presentation in GTC ’14 via Nvidias You tube channel & here is the part dedicated to Titan Z.

I wasn’t looking the event as it was streaming, but when I sat to my PC after a while & saw the card with 12Gb of vRAM.. have to admit that the first mind crossed my head that moment was: I want one!

Is it useful for rendering (with Octane in my case)?

After I started to reading a bit more (as the video wasn’t available at that moment) I’ve found some details that honestly I was expecting (but clearly did not want to be true..)

First of all Titan Z is a dual-GPU card & that means it doesn’t have 12Gb of video memory, but rather two chunks of six. What does that mean for the user? Programs like Octane Render will only see 6Gb of vRAM, as scene files should fit into memory of both GPUs inside.

Second point is the fan. Axial design (already found almost the same on 690) might be beter in terms of noise compared to centrifugal blower, but it’s placement is far from being perfect (especially if You house multiple cards). Why? Well, unlike with centrifugal blower where all the hot air is going out from the back of the card this fan possition will split the air into two streams. One of them will go out of the case, when the other will stay inside. The card might sip it again & cooling will not be as efficient..-naturally temperaturess in card will be raised & this might even be causing GPU to throttle down. As a result decreased performance comes along.

Third reason is three slot design. From one point it is good: as the power of two, usually dual slot cards (read 4slots in total) You can fit into three slots, but.. how much of these You can fit into regular cases & typical motherboards? mITX stardart has one PCIe & cases usually only dual slot space. mATX will give You 4 slot spacing..- that is only enough for one such card. ATX (EATX) will have 8 expansion slot spacing thus only two cards.. – so.. Unless You use ribon cables, daugther boards, server backplanes, or modified cases – You’ll not be able to house more than 4GPUs – two of these cards into a normal case. So in the end this three slot design doesn’t give anything extra.

Last but not least – the price. Nearly 3k$ – for less performance (card is rated at 8 TFlops of FP32) than You can get out of Two Titan Black (2 x 5.1TFlops) cards…keeps me asking – why would You want to pay more (for less)? Just to save that one slot of space?

So, really, what’s the point?

I assume Titan Z migh draw less power, but we don’t actually know just yet how much. It will be interesting to calculate later how much performance You can get out of Titans Z compared to two Titan Black. Then to compare electricity bill after doing simillar work.

But still, I can’t stop thinking.. For 3K$ You can buy not two, but three Titan Black cards & that will have nearlly twice the performance 15.3 compared to only 8 TFlops from Titan Z – same money, twice the performance? Can You really ignore that?

Let’s look for more options. If You desperate for 6Gb cards, nVidia gave green light for 6Gb GTX 780 – & the best part is (if it’s true) it will come for 550Eu – same amount of vRam per GPU as Titan Z has, but for ~ 1/5th of that price..

Titan Z is definitely one of the most beautiful & at the same time very powerful card, but..as Octane Render user, I just don’t see it bringing any value or anything else on the table that You can’t get now from available parts. Personally I’d step & build a custom rig or expansion box with a loop of effective & silent water cooling. You can build entire system: 3x 780 6Gb, capable motherboard, CPU, RAM, SSD, PSU, case..even with custom water cooling. If You add a bit more funds four cards could be housed easily..

I see 12Gb being for marketing purposes only, as AMD not so long ago has released 8Gb card..- it’s a race, like the one we see in Photo equipment space with megapixels..there might be some cases where that split vRam might come handy, but for the sake of this article my field of vission is very narrow, seeing a card only in perspective of utilising all that power for raytracing. It would be hard to recommend it for anyone who is using Octane Render.