Despite some concerns over if it would see the light of day, Nvidia’s GeForce GTX Titan Z might finally see a release on May 28th. The GPU, which will be Nvidia’s most powerful offering has been pointed to a Wednesday release date by several sources. It’s a somewhat odd day for release, but still – even if it’s a day or two out it does mean that the card should be appearing by the end of May.
If this news story feels at all familiar, that’s because it is. The card has been rumored to be released twice now, and each time users have waited only to be met with silence from Nvidia. But this time the CEO of Nvidia, spoke to CNET it it would appear that we’re still on for the cards rather hefty price tag of $3000 US dollars.
CNET: In other gaming topics, there are reports you killed or delayed Titan Z, your new high-end GPU.
– Huang: “No, no, that’s silliness”.
CNET: So it’s still on time?
– Huang: “Yeah.”
CNET: $3,000 is a lot of money for a GPU. What do you do to make sure that for someone who buys it, it’s not irrelevant two or three years down the road?
– Huang: “In fact, most of the customers that buy Titan Zs buy it every year.”
CNET: Do you anticipate that happening even with the $3,000 pricing?
– Huang: “Yeah. And the reason for that is the people who buy Titans and Titan Zs have an insatiable need for computing capability, graphics computing capability. So either they got tired of using just a 1,080p monitor and they just bought a 4K. My Titan all of a sudden’s not enough. For a 4K monitor, a $3,000 to $5,000 monitor, I need something bigger to drive it. So that’s Titan Z.”
I’ve got to say that from the perspective of a Nvidia GPU owner, I’m not super impressed or convinced by Huang’s answers. AMD’s current dual card offering, the Radeon R9 295X2 8GB GPU (amazon affiliate link) is significantly cheaper at around $1,500 dollars, and likely to perform pretty much on par (especially considering the ludicrous price gap between the two GPU’s). For users who’ve got a 4K screen, a 295×2 could certainly be the better financial offer.
The other issue is that the Titan Z is rumored to feature a slower clock speed than the Titan Z, meaning that you’d be better off coughing up for two Titan Black’s in SLI if you did want Nvidia and had the cash to burn. It’s a rather strange move for Nvidia to continue to push the card out, and I’m unsure if it’s particularly good for the industry if this card actually proves to sell the number Nvidia are hoping for.