Tweet
OK, so perhaps there's just a certain level of exaggeration to the title of this article. After all, the strength of PC technology is its astonishing level of scalability, from the humble Intel Atom found in Windows 8 tablets, through dual CPU server set-ups all the way up to the Cray XK7 super-computer with 18,688 16-core AMD Opterons and an equal measure of Nvidia Tesla K20 graphics cards. But if money were no object and you were looking to construct an absolute top-end PC based on consumer level parts, the chances are that the system you'd create would be very similar indeed to what we have here: an Intel Sandy Bridge-E hex-core processor working in concert with three Nvidia GeForce Titans in SLI. That's what Nvidia thought when it commissioned this particular PC, sending it to Digital Foundry to assess what all that power translates into in terms of an actual gameplay experience.We've covered the Titan before of course. At around £850 it is one of the most expensive graphics cards money can buy, and it's the most powerful single-chip GPU on the market. Computational metrics are difficult to translate into game performance, but the Titan offers a tangible 50 per cent performance boost over Nvidia's previous flagship, the GeForce GTX 680. The fact that it is based on a single processor (rather than two like the GTX 690 or AMD's Radeon HD 7990) allows for additional flexibility and scalability via SLI - the process of adding multiple graphics cards together and combining their power. In theory there's nothing stopping you adding a fourth Titan to the mix, but it's at this point that the laws of diminishing returns kick in savagely - three of these behemoths in parallel should do the job quite nicely.
While the Titans are running at stock frequencies, Intel CPUs are very, very simple to overclock and the 3970X seemed quite happy to run at 4.8GHz, kept within operating temperatures by a meaty Phanteks high performance air cooler. Providing the necessary wattage we have a 1200W Corsair AX1200i power supply while everything is beautifully encased in a Silverstone Fortress FT02 unibody aluminium case. We'd never even considered the merits of a £175 chassis before but this is a superb enclosure with absolutely no compromises to quality we could pick up on. Over and above the aesthetic we particularly liked the way the rear of the motherboard is on the top of the case, the various ports easily accessible and cabling kept tidy via a mesh shroud that clips on once all of your leads are in place.
Read more…
More...