| CGI-Quality said: So PC gurus, would you buy this, if you could afford a $900-$1200 dollar card, over the GTX 690? |
Yes, if you are gaming on a monitor > 1920x1200 resolution, or using multiple monitors or doing things that take advantage of many CUDA cores. If all of these apply, then sure, it might be worth it. Otherwise something like an HD7970/GTX670 is more than sufficient. If you already have a GTX690, you could always wait to see how this GPU performs and sell the 690 if it meets your criteria.
Personally, I'd prefer a GPU with 85% performance of a GTX690 without the micro-stutter and SLI scaling issues. My main caveat for why I personally wouldn't buy the Titan is because I expect HD8970 to be priced at $499-549. In that case, I'd rather purchase 2 of those (despite CF issues) because I could then use them for games and use them for BitCoin mining when not gaming (http://www.bitcoincharts.com/). Because of bitcoin mining, I haven't had to pay for a single GPU upgrade on the PC since HD4000 series. By the time 8970 launches, my 7970s should produce enough coins to upgrade to 8970s at significantly reduced upgrade cost. I am not biased towards AMD but when going with a competitor entails paying $800-1000 out of my own pocket, I choose cards that make $ when not gaming. If this doesn't interest you, then it's a moot point.
With 20nm Maxwell (Nvidia) and Volcanic Islands (AMD) rumored for Q1-Q2 2014, I wouldn't spend $900 on a single GPU though for the sake of future-proofing. I would only buy that if you can afford to buy the latest and greatest every 12-15 months. I also have a feeling NV is launching this limited edition Titan card like they did with 7800GTX 512MB or 8800Ultra. They milked the consumers by pricing those at $700-830 and soon we got GPUs much faster for way less price. Even GTX280 came out for $649 and 7 months later NV replaced it with a $399 GTX285. I am thinking when Maxwell launches, we'll have a $499-549 GPU that is faster than the $899 Titan.
I also cannot see the future-proofing factor as I feel with PS4/720 launching in Q4 2013, we could see a significant increase in graphical quality for next gen games, which means cards like GTX690/Titan will be quickly outdated (remember what happened when PS3/360 launched?). Essentially, when Titan launches, most games of 2013 will still be shoddy PS360 console ports aside from a few like Crysis 3, Metro Last Light, etc. But by the time actual next gen DX11 games launch in 2014-2015, Titan will be too slow to play them and we'll be on Maxwell and beyond. It seems Titan is launching at an awkward time since it's doubtful that we'll see any next gen looking games until October-November 2013. If you can sell the GTX690 and upgrade to the Titan for minimal cost and Titan ends up overclocking to 1Ghz, then it could be worth it to escape SLI / micro-stutter.
