I'm not understanding this at all. When is the 780 due then? Will it be Maxwell? I am +4 excite about Maxwell, but Titan is about 100% out of my budget. So you have a card which has a gpu twice the size of the one in a 680, gives you 30-50% extra poke, costs nigh on what a GTX 690 would? I mean, if you can afford to spend the sort of cash most people spend on a whole PC, on just a card, then surely, another couple hundred you can have the most insane thing that ever lived, the 690 with 4GB VRAM and yippy kai ey....?
Titan utilizes the GK110 gpu which, unlike the GK104 seen in the 670 and 680, does not sacrifice compute performance in favor of video performance (gaming). Previously this chip was only available in Nvidia's Tesla line of products but Titan will be the first GeForce card to have it. I can't speak to it's performance as I've yet to read through any of the benchmarks or reviews, but I'm guessing it will be at least equal to or greater than a 680 and better than the 580 at gpu compute tasks. Also last I checked 2X 680 > 1X 690 despite being theoretically the same.
your right on the 2x 680 > 1x 690, the 690 has 4 gb vram but its shared between the two gpu's so each gpu only has 2gb to use. The two 680's are going to be running 4gb vram each allowing for better surround gaming. Also while originally very high scoring the 690 hasn't seemed to respond well to overclocking and tweaking from what I've read while there are evga overclocked cards available that blow away the base 680 cards and can then be further overclocked and watercooled. The early reading I did on the 700 series had it being based on the Maxwell architecture but I'm not sure how much of that were details given by nvidia and how much was speculation by tech nerds. I'm interested in the Titan but I'm still thinking that my best option for surround gaming will be picking up a factory overclocked 680 when the 700 series arrives.
My friend has a 670 and is more than happy with performance. It is probably the best of the 6 series. I will have to wait then for Maxwell in the form of the 880, ready with another 400 bucks. From what I have read, Nvidia developed the GK104, realised it was totally badass and so did not bother with a GK110 for the 6 series cards unlike the previous 5 series. Titan apparently is a card made from the leftovers of Tesla in a new gamer effective package. Whilst the thing is a monster chip, near double the size of the regular kepler in terms of transistors, I can't afford that kind of spend.
This might not be accurate anymore since I haven't had the time to keep up with tech as much as I used to lately, but I know I read a while back that Nvidia had originally meant for the 700 series to be the first Maxwell cards, but Maxwell was running behind, so the 700s would be GK110s, and Maxwell would debut with the 800 series. I'm running the MSI GTX670 Power Edition now. With the significant stock overclock it comes within 1-2% performance of the 680, while running 15C cooler than a reference 680 in benchmarks (and it does match the benchmark temps in my setup), and much, much quieter. It also happily overclocks well beyond that point, so it'll actually run faster than a stock 680 if you want to tweak it a bit. The custom cooler on it looks and feels far higher quality than any other I've seen on a video card. All that and it was one of the -cheapest- 670s when I picked it up a few months back, too (paid only a little over $300 for it on sale on Newegg!). First MSI part I've bought in many years, but definitely not going to be the last. So, yeah, the 670 is amazing. This thing is probably the best bang for the buck PC component I've ever bought, and I'm now completely in love with MSI.
