Nvidia Titan Xp Flagship GPU Launched, Promises Extreme Performance for Extreme Users

When Nvidia launched the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GPU last month, we were surprised to note how similar it was to the semi-professional Titan X. The 1080 Ti should have been a cut-down version of its bigger sibling, but ended up upstaging it completely thanks to the use of newer and faster components. The 1080 Ti delivered roughly the same amount of power but its price was still nearly 50 percent lower. That imbalance of course caused the Titan X to become largely irrelevant, and Nvidia has corrected this by releasing a new flagship called the Titan Xp.

This new offering will be the second Titan-level product in Nvidia's Pascal generation. The Pascal architecture has underpinned Nvidia's entire GeForce 10-series GPUs, all of which perform well and are extremely energy efficient. Interestingly, rumours of the 2016 Titan X prior to its launch last year had referred to it as "Titan XP".

This new refresh uses the same GP102 GPU, but with all of its resources fully enabled. It has 3,840 shader processor units and has a boost speed of 1582MHz. It is outfitted with 12GB of GDDR5 RAM running at 11.4Gbps on a 384-bit bus, for a total memory bandwidth of 547.7 GBps. Total pixel-pushing power is rated at 12 Teraflops, which Nvidia touts as an "irresponsible amount" of performance.

Power draw is rated at 250W and SLI HB will allow for two of these cards to be teamed up. Nvidia's spec sheet lists DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0b connectors, indicating that DVI has been dropped just like it was on the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders' Edition reference design. Cards can be used with Windows 7-10, FreeBSD and Linux workstations.

In contrast, the 2016 Titan X and the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti both have 3,584 processor units, but the latter has a slightly constrained memory pathway. The more consumer-oriented 1080 Ti also has 1GB less RAM, but it uses the same newer and faster memory chips found on the new Titan Xp. That makes this new card the best of both worlds, and clearly places it at the top of the hierarchy. It has the same $1200 (approximately Rs. 77,335) price tag that the 2016 Titan X launched at.

Nvidia Titan Xp graphics cards will be sold directly by Nvidia and as part of prebuilt systems. Official images show an all-black version of the familiar die-cast aluminium vapour chamber cooler that Nvidia has been using since the debut of the 10-series. Cards are already available for sale in the US, with availability in India unknown as of now.

Titan series graphics cards are aimed not just at gamers who demand the absolute best, but also at content creators, VR developers, and researchers working on deep learning and artificial intelligence.

In a footnote to its announcement, Nvidia also revealed that macOS support for all Pascal-based GPUs is coming later this month. The news will be welcome to those building their own "Hackintosh" machines, but could also be a hint as to what hardware and capabilities Apple's recently announced Mac Pro and iMac reinvention might have.