Upgrade Path

[Lepton87]

Hello guys, I want to discuss my upgrade options. Currently as you see in my signature I have a single Titan. I don't use it for CUDA, I don't care about its increased DP performance. I just care about gaming performance. For simplicity's sake I'm gonna give prices in my currency. There's a shop that has two Titans for sale on polish equivalent of e-buy(Allegro) for simplicity sake I'm just gonna call it e-buy. So they want 2800PLN for each.
(release price was 4000PLN and that's how much I paid for it). So far nobody seems interested in buying them. Titan is a really niche card in my country and it is very hard to sell. They said the cards are new but are after exposition so they sell just the cards without anything like a box etc. UPDATE: never-mind that, I just found a new Titan with everything for the same price. How much do you thing I should haggle for one of those two cards given that I can send them a link with a new card for the same price they are asking?
My second option is to buy two 290s for about 1500PLN each so I will pay almost the same price for two cards as for one card. I don't know how much I can get for my Titan because I don't have a written warranty for it. Any thoughts?

 

[Arkadrel]

A titan is a monster card, just like a 290x.

What resolution do you game at to need more than a Titan?


If your worried about 4k gameing or something like that then....

You might be best off getting 2 x 290 or 290x.
At 4k resolutions a 290x is generally faster than a GTX Titan.

http://www.eteknix.com/4k-gaming-showdown-amd-r9-290x-r9-280x-vs-nvidia-gtx-titan-gtx-780/

 

[Lepton87]

My monitor is in the signature, dell U2711 which has a resolution of 2560x1440. I don't care about 4k for the moment. So I'm interested in performance at just that resolution. I know that NV cards aren't best for 4k but it's irrelevant to me because I don't plan on getting a 4k display for a few years. I would actually prefer a 30' 2560x1600 monitor.

 

[RussianSensation]

Reference R9 290s give 91% of 780Ti SLI performance and are 78% faster than a single Titan at 1440p:
http://www.sweclockers.com/recension/18944-nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan-z/17#pagehead

Sell your Titan ASAP before it loses more value and find 2 after-market 290s, preferably either PowerColor PCS+ or Sapphire Tri-Xs. Once overclocked, in games that have no CF scaling you will be at least as fast as your Titan on average, and when CF scales, 80% faster. Bonus is Mantle and 4GB of VRAM. If you have the patience, you can also put the Titan for sale at a high market price and keep waiting for a buyer. Hopefully by the time 870/880 launches you will have sold the Titan.

I would do everything to get rid of this card before next gen comes out or you could lose a heck of a lot more resale value on it. Think about it, if 880 is even 20% faster than 780Ti, that would imply 870 will be as fast as a Titan and cost $500 or less. It is going to be even harder to sell the Titan next year.

 

[Lepton87]

Reference R9 290s give 91% of 780Ti SLI performance and are 78% faster than a single Titan at 1440p:
http://www.sweclockers.com/recension/18944-nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan-z/17#pagehead

Sell your Titan ASAP before it loses more value and find 2 after-market 290s, preferably either PowerColor PCS+ or Sapphire Tri-Xs. Once overclocked, in games that have no CF scaling you will be at least as fast as your Titan on average, and when CF scales, 80% faster. Bonus is Mantle and 4GB of VRAM. If you have the patience, you can also put the Titan for sale at a high market price and keep waiting for a buyer. Hopefully by the time 870/880 launches you will have sold the Titan.

I would do everything to get rid of this card before next gen comes out or you could lose a heck of a lot more resale value on it. Think about it, if 880 is even 20% faster than 780Ti, that would imply 870 will be as fast as a Titan and cost $500 or less. It is going to be even harder to sell the Titan next year.

The problem with selling the Titan is that I don't see anyone buying it in my country. There are literally two Titans(supposedly new after exposition, some e-tailer is the seller) on the polish equivalent of ebay and no one is interested. There is also a new Titan in one e-tailer for 2800PLN(4000PLN was the release price) and no one is buying. So I would have to go very low with the price, probably no more than half the price I paid which is not even enough for a good custom 290X. It's probably way different in the US where people don't pinch every penny and maybe some even use this DP capability. Out of curiosity how much of the original price can people recoup in the US for a used Titan? I bet it's not a paltry 50%.
ps. that 4GB of Vram doesn't seem like a bonus compared to 6GB that Titan has There's literally zero used cards on the market.

2xSapphire TRI-X 3000PLN or 3200PLN there seems to be two models one clocked at 1GHz/5.2GHz and the other at 1040MHz/5.2GHz so even if I sell my card for half the price that is 2000PLN I end up spending 1000-1200PLN instead of 2800PLN if I wanted to go SLI. Still better value than Titans. Well, I would prefer to snag a titan for 2000PLN myself then selling it for that much. Maybe I will list my Titan for 2500PLN and in the meantime try to find one myself for about 2000PLN. But who would buy it for 2500 if it's available new in one e-tailer for 2800PLN. Over here it's like EE CPUs from Intel, no one wants to pay more than half their original price if that.
Trivia alert update:
I actually thought ebay.com was e-buy, how embarrassing. I didn't just misspelled, I actually thought the name of one of the premiere sites on the Internet was e-buy which seemed logical.

 

[Lepton87]

I think the card that makes the most sense is this one
http://www.computerbase.de/2014-04/sapphire-radeon-vapor-x-r9-290-luefter-aus-lautstaerke-test/

Sapphire 290 Vapor-X, clocked at 1030MHz/5.600MHz. At stock this card at worst matches reference clocked non-throttling 290X so the additional units are worth a measly 3% increase in core frequency and 12% increase in memory frequency. So that additional 256 shaders and 17 texture units(10% more) isn't worth much. It seems that at the same clocks R290X is just 3-4% faster than 290. Totally not worth the price hike.
So 2x 290 Vapor-X would cost me 3350PLN. It's absolutely unbeatable value. It's worth it even if I get just 2000PLN for my Titan. So with some reselling it's going to cost me 1350PLN versus 2800PLN if I wanted to just add another card. The only caveat is that I hate selling expensive equipment without warranty, so I have to give my own warranty that what I'm selling works. The buyer can damage the card and then I'm left with a card that someone intentionally or not broke.

 

[KaRLiToS]

Everything lose value overtime.

If I were you I would keep a Titan and get another one. The Titan is still an awsome card.
Thats my two cents.

 

[Headfoot]

Sell the Titan. Then buy 2x Used 290s for nearly the same price. Since you don't have a warranty on your Titan you won't lose anything by purchasing used 290s. It will just be a lot cheaper (unless the difference isn't as big between new and used 290 like it is in the US). Resale value on 290s is about as low as its going to go for a while, while I think Titans still have a good amount of room to fall

Are you required to sell your Titan with some sort of warranty? I am very familiar with the US laws on the issue but I have no idea how Polish law might differ. It seems fairly safe to say that you can sell the Titan and make it clear to your buyer (preferably in writing) that it comes "As-is" without warranty, implied or express.

 

[DooKey]

Considering the situation you are in I would buy another Titan. At your resolution you'll be good to go for some time if you SLI.

 

[Lepton87]

Everything lose value overtime.

If I were you I would keep a Titan and get another one. The Titan is still an awsome card.
Thats my two cents.

That is certainly the most convenient way to increase performance but that convenience and safety comes with a price premium. I'm thinking about that.

 

[Lepton87]

Sell the Titan. Then buy 2x Used 290s for nearly the same price. Since you don't have a warranty on your Titan you won't lose anything by purchasing used 290s. It will just be a lot cheaper (unless the difference isn't as big between new and used 290 like it is in the US). Resale value on 290s is about as low as its going to go for a while, while I think Titans still have a good amount of room to fall

Are you required to sell your Titan with some sort of warranty? I am very familiar with the US laws on the issue but I have no idea how Polish law might differ. It seems fairly safe to say that you can sell the Titan and make it clear to your buyer (preferably in writing) that it comes "As-is" without warranty, implied or express.

There aren't many used R290s to choose from, only reference models but they are cheap indeed. They go for about 1000PLN compared to 1650 for a new Vapor-X or 1500 fora new Tri-X. Unfortunately the only used cheap radeons are the reference models. I also found 3 290Xs for about 1100-1150 each. Overall there are only 18 used R290/X radeons on the biggest polish auction site compared to 150 new ones. I guess mining craze wasn't as big here due to the higher cost of electricity. From what I heard the reference cooler for R290 is just unbearable in terms of noise. I had very briefly two 7970s and they were unbearably loud in CF, on top of that they had eardrum piercing coil whine. Technically I'm not required to give any warranty but no one is going to buy if I don't. I have few comments and even from people with hundreds of positive comments people don't buy if they don't give so called 7 days warranty to ensure that you are selling a working product.

 

[KaRLiToS]

It's hard to find some used cards sometime. You need to lurk the forums such as the anandtech market place, [H]Forum and Overclock.net market place. But then, you have to keep in mind the shipping fees and the duty fees. Depending on where you live, it might be difficult to avoid those fees. Same thing with ebay.

I assume you live in Poland?

Anyhow, I would still keep the monster Titan and SLI with a second one.

 

[ZGR]

Titan is a good card with 6gb of VRAM.

Have you tried overclocking the core and memory to see if it gets you the gains you need? But I would buy another Titan; and be happy with Titan SLI

 

[Lepton87]

It's hard to find some used cards sometime. You need to lurk the forums such as the anandtech market place, [H]Forum and Overclock.net market place. But then, you have to keep in mind the shipping fees and the duty fees. Depending on where you live, it might be difficult to avoid those fees. Same thing with ebay.

I assume you live in Poland?

Anyhow, I would still keep the monster Titan and SLI with a second one.

Yes, Poland. I thought I couldn't be more clear about it. Well, I didn't consider buying from abroad. Very few people agree to send parcels abroad. I might take a look at german ebay. Maybe.... But I'm very skeptical about this.
UPDATE:I think there are two used Titans for sale on german ebay.
1st one already at 445eur2nd at 301EUR currently If I can get one for about 500EUR that would be an easy decision. New costs 700EUR here and only one e-tailer has it for that price, the rest have some left-overs with the "old" price tag of 1000EUR. eh, europe. In the US you can buy titan black for 700EUR. The benefit of no VAT and avoiding sales tax if even applicable. I don't know how your sales tax works but from what I gather is that if you buy on-line you don't have to pay it? or something like that? B&M stores sometimes charge sales tax from what I heard.I remember a guy who was even proud that he paid sales tax at MC. OK, back to the chase.
UPDATE: I don't know german but from the descriptions it seems that the sellers don't send abroad.

Titan is a good card with 6gb of VRAM.

Have you tried overclocking the core and memory to see if it gets you the gains you need? But I would buy another Titan; and be happy with Titan SLI

Unfortunately I have a dud. +93/400MHz + 37.5mV so it works more or less like +100/+400 because additional voltage increases boost slightly. Temp and power target maxed out, fan set at fixed speed, about 55-60%. 70% starts to annoy me without my headphones on. I thought about a different BIOS so I would have stable clocks and not this roller-coaster. To be fair they are quite stable hovering in the 1100-1123MHz range. Still, I don't see the point of this slight clock changes.
From my PSU one may gather that I don't particularly care about power consumption but what's nice about Titan is that it has the best perf per watt short of maxwell.

 

[KaRLiToS]

Skynet BIOSes are very good. It unlocks up to 1.212v if I remember correctly.

Check the Titan Owners Club at OCN, the main page is filled with usefull info
http://www.overclock.net/t/1363440/...ial-nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan-owners-club/0_30

Direct Link to the post with Skynet BIOS
http://www.overclock.net/t/1363440/...-gtx-titan-owners-club/14970_30#post_20765842

 

[Lepton87]

Skynet BIOSes are very good. It unlocks up to 1.212v if I remember correctly.

Check the Titan Owners Club at OCN, the main page is filled with usefull info
http://www.overclock.net/t/1363440/...ial-nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan-owners-club/0_30

Direct Link to the post with Skynet BIOS
http://www.overclock.net/t/1363440/...-gtx-titan-owners-club/14970_30#post_20765842

No stupid turbo boost should help a little, but(1.1625+37.5mV) to 1.212V is nothing. I'm wondering if it's even worth the risk of flashing to gain 2% more performance, I don't think the oscillating clock is taking more than that.
VOLTAGE CONTROL INFO AND TOOLS

Zawarudo's 1.45v & LLC Tool (Click to show)
All in one tool, only needs afterburner voltage unlock before working. No need for extensive command promt work.

This seems interesting but my Titan didn't really react to adding that 37.5mV other then slight automatic boost increase but it didn't allow to increase offset at all.

Titan Overclocking seems needlessly complicated, flashing BIOS, making slight changes to an OC application. Well, with 6950 I also had to make some slight changes to unlock voltage control, I think it came down to adding a declamatory sentence that you are aware of the risks etc. to a config file. Is it still needed for MSI AB to work properly?

 

[RussianSensation]

Lepton, remember the decision does not only have to be Titan SLI or sell and buy 290s. It is still better to sell the Titan at half price, even for 400-500 Euro, and just invest that money into 880s than to spend 500 Euro on a 2nd Titan. if you are having this tough time selling a single Titan, how are you going to sell 2 Titans? It will continue to be an even greater money sink for old tech.

What if 870 provides Titan level of performance for just $400? r9 290 already does this at $370! So even if you sell the Titan at 400-500 euro, I would probably rather have 2 870s/880s than 2 Titans esp since yours is not a good overclocker. You just have to time the sale right. Given how excellent the performance/watt is on 750Ti and how good it overclocks, I just don't see how an 870 OC / 880 OC won't beat your Titan.

PS. When I mentioned 4GB of VRAM it was in case you wanted to sell the Titan and get 2 780Tis.

 

[Lepton87]

880 and other unreleased cards are out of the question because I don't want to be left without a card.