1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,000 When you hear Titan, you might think ancient Greek gods, 2 00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:07,740 Saturn's largest moon, or a football team from Nashville. But in the tech world, it brings to mind 3 00:00:07,740 --> 00:00:13,720 the NVIDIA Titan lineup, which has represented Team Green's most expensive GPUs since 2013. 4 00:00:13,720 --> 00:00:18,400 And today we're gonna take a little trip down memory lane as we look at the history of the Titan 5 00:00:18,400 --> 00:00:21,840 and why exactly it's a separate lineup of cards in the first place. 6 00:00:21,840 --> 00:00:25,880 You see, unlike the numbered GeForce cards that most gamers gravitate toward, 7 00:00:25,880 --> 00:00:29,800 the Titan series is aimed at users who need GPU compute, 8 00:00:29,840 --> 00:00:33,440 that is using their GPU for applications other than gaming. 9 00:00:33,440 --> 00:00:37,760 As we explained in this video, GPUs are fundamentally different than regular CPUs 10 00:00:37,760 --> 00:00:41,360 and that they're designed to perform well with parallel workloads, 11 00:00:41,360 --> 00:00:44,480 tasks that can be readily split up and worked on by different parts 12 00:00:44,480 --> 00:00:49,280 of the processor simultaneously. Good examples of these workloads are artificial intelligence, 13 00:00:49,280 --> 00:00:53,280 machine learning, editing video, professional rendering, large-scale data analysis, 14 00:00:53,280 --> 00:00:56,880 and scientific research. In fact, if you look at the product page 15 00:00:56,880 --> 00:01:00,520 for the latest RTX Titan, you don't see NVIDIA even say a word 16 00:01:00,520 --> 00:01:05,560 about the card's gaming performance. Don't get me wrong though, Titan cards are still excellent gaming cards. 17 00:01:05,560 --> 00:01:08,600 And when the original GTX Titan came out in 2013, 18 00:01:08,600 --> 00:01:13,480 reviewers were gushing over how it was the best single GPU solution out there for gamers, 19 00:01:13,480 --> 00:01:17,720 with the Titan often beating out the then top end GTX 680 20 00:01:17,720 --> 00:01:23,600 by around 50% in terms of frame rate, thanks to having over a thousand more stream processors, 21 00:01:23,600 --> 00:01:29,200 even though its clock speed was a little lower. 2014 saw us get the Titan Black and Titan Z. 22 00:01:29,200 --> 00:01:33,000 Although they were based around the same GK110 processor 23 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:36,040 as the original Titan, the Black Edition had higher clocks, 24 00:01:36,040 --> 00:01:40,000 while the Z was an incredibly expensive dual GPU card 25 00:01:40,000 --> 00:01:43,280 that came in at around a whopping $3,000. 26 00:01:43,280 --> 00:01:49,000 Although it was insanely powerful, a pair of GTX 780TIs featuring the same GPU 27 00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:54,180 could be had for less than half the cost. And remember, this was back when dual graphics card setups 28 00:01:54,180 --> 00:01:58,860 had a lot more appeal than they do today. Adding to the confusion was that gaming was still 29 00:01:58,860 --> 00:02:05,820 a big part of how NVIDIA was marketing the card, even though the 780TIs and SLI was a cheaper solution. 30 00:02:05,820 --> 00:02:09,060 The next iteration of the Titan was 2015's Titan X, 31 00:02:09,060 --> 00:02:12,780 which was the first Titan not to be based on the Kepler architecture, 32 00:02:12,780 --> 00:02:15,780 which was confusingly followed up the next year 33 00:02:15,780 --> 00:02:19,300 by a card with the same name with a Pascal GPU instead, 34 00:02:19,300 --> 00:02:24,780 which NVIDIA pushed as being a VR solution as virtual reality headsets need to push high frame rates 35 00:02:24,780 --> 00:02:28,900 and resolutions to avoid breaking immersion, as well as causing motion sickness. 36 00:02:28,900 --> 00:02:33,260 2017 brought the Volta-based Titan V and the Titan XP, 37 00:02:33,260 --> 00:02:37,460 which was a slightly more powerful version of the Pascal Titan X, 38 00:02:37,460 --> 00:02:40,660 but by this point, NVIDIA was really getting away from its messaging 39 00:02:40,660 --> 00:02:44,340 that build Titan as a good card for PC gamers flush with cash. 40 00:02:44,340 --> 00:02:50,100 And as we mentioned earlier, the RTX Titan from 2018 was barely marketed to gamers at all. 41 00:02:50,100 --> 00:02:55,740 And it makes sense since gamers have shied away from the Titan due to its being bad value for the money. 42 00:02:55,740 --> 00:03:00,780 But why is it so expensive? One reason is that Titan cards offer more VRAM 43 00:03:00,780 --> 00:03:04,980 than GPUs further down the stack, sometimes a lot more. 44 00:03:04,980 --> 00:03:09,020 For example, the RTX Titan comes with a whopping 24 gigabytes 45 00:03:09,020 --> 00:03:13,300 of GDDR6, more than twice as much as the 1080Ti. 46 00:03:13,300 --> 00:03:18,420 And unlike with your main system memory, you can't just add more RAM to a graphics card. 47 00:03:18,420 --> 00:03:22,140 And for those working with large data sets for research or for machine learning, 48 00:03:22,140 --> 00:03:27,460 having enough VRAM to store all that data the GPU is working on can make a big difference. 49 00:03:27,460 --> 00:03:32,380 There's also the fact that SLI setups have been plagued with problems for years. 50 00:03:32,380 --> 00:03:39,180 And folks who can afford two high-end CPUs might be interested in a pricey single GPU solution 51 00:03:39,180 --> 00:03:44,700 in order to get bleeding edge performance without dealing with shaky driver or application support. 52 00:03:44,700 --> 00:03:48,540 And of course, because the Titan is positioned in the market as a compute card, 53 00:03:48,540 --> 00:03:54,580 lots of Titan customers are businesses and other organizations that won't bulk at the high price tag. 54 00:03:54,580 --> 00:03:58,820 For example, a research university probably wouldn't think twice about spending an extra thousand bucks 55 00:03:58,820 --> 00:04:03,740 on a graphics card the same way a home user that's been scrimping and saving would. 56 00:04:03,740 --> 00:04:08,300 The good news, of course, is that if you're just chasing high frame rates in your favorite games, 57 00:04:08,300 --> 00:04:12,900 you're not missing much by skipping the Titan. Except knowing that you have more expensive toys 58 00:04:12,900 --> 00:04:16,220 than your neighbor. Makes me feel good. So thanks for watching guys. 59 00:04:16,220 --> 00:04:20,700 If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. Please hit subscribe and please hit us up in the comment section 60 00:04:20,700 --> 00:04:24,140 with your suggestions for topics that we should cover in the future.