NVIDIA today unveiled their most powerful GPU yet, the TITAN RTX (nicknamed T-Rex). While it’s priced clear out of the regular consumer market at $2,500, that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to use next-gen VR headsets thanks to its VirtuaLink connector port.

Like NVIDIA’s other 20-series GPUs, TITAN RTX is based on the company’s new Turing architecture. The company’s latest GPU isn’t really built for gamers in mind, but rather more befitting the workload of AI researchers, deep learning devs, data scientists, and game and video professionals. The company would be remiss though if they didn’t capture whoever has the pockets deep enough to shell out the $2,500 for what NVIDIA touts as “world’s most powerful desktop GPU,” providing what we’d hope to be VR’s best real-time ray tracing performance money can buy.

Image courtesy NVIDIA

To date, all of the company’s 20-series reference cards feature the VirtuaLink connector, and we expect a majority of manufacturers to carry over the next-gen VR port. The Quadro RTX cards, RTX 2080 Ti, 2080, and 2070—and now the TITAN RTX all include it.

VirtuaLink is new connector standard created by a consortium representing many of VR’s most prominent players—NVIDIA, AMD, Valve, Oculus, and Microsoft. The port itself offers four high-speed HBR3 DisplayPort lanes (which are “scalable for future needs”), a USB3.1 data channel for on-board cameras, and up to 27 watts of power. The standard is said to be “purpose-built for VR,” being optimized for latency and the needs of next-generation headsets. That means a singular cable connected your computer from your next VR headset.

Although there’s no specific launch date yet. NVIDIA says TITAN RTX will be available “later this month” in the U.S. and Europe.

SEE ALSO
NVIDIA's GeForce RTX Cards Bring New VR Rendering Features and Enhancements

TITAN RTX Specs

  • 576 multi-precision Turing Tensor Cores, providing up to 130 teraflops of deep learning performance.
  • 72 Turing RT Cores, delivering up to 11 GigaRays per second of real-time ray-tracing performance.
  • 24GB of high-speed GDDR6 memory with 672GB/s of bandwidth — 2x the memory of previous-generation TITAN GPUs — to fit larger models and datasets.
  • 100GB/s NVIDIA NVLink can pair two TITAN RTX GPUs to scale memory and compute.
  • Incredible performance and memory bandwidth for real-time 8K video editing.
  • VirtualLink port provides the performance and connectivity required by next-gen VR headsets.
GeForce GPU Ray Tracing RTX-OPS Performance Memory Starting At Founders Edition
Titan RTX 11 GigaRays/s TDB 24GB $2,500 N/A
RTX 2080 Ti 10 GigaRays/sec 78T RTX-OPS 11GB $1,000 $1,200
RTX 2080 8 GigaRays/sec 60T RTX-OPS 8GB $700 $800
RTX 2070 6 GigaRays/sec 45T RTX-OPS 8GB $500 $600

Check out the full specs at NVIDIA.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • gothicvillas

    I have the current Titan GPU and love it. I game only VR and whatever I throw at it, it just works. I dont think I was ever bothered with FPS or anything like that. But not in rush (yet) to upgrade though. Wake me up when it cost £1000.

    • Arashi

      LOL, try it with the Pimax 5k+, you’ll easily get it on its knees :)

      • gothicvillas

        I think I will stick to my Vive for some time :) thanks for the heads up though

    • Proof XR Lab

      I bought my RTX2080Ti specifically for PC VR. I don’t even use the rig for anything but VR (i have an Intel NUC for everyday computing).

      This new Titan looks incredible, price/value not a consideration at the top end, sheer compute power is everything. My RTX has surpassed my expectations in terms of supersampling.

    • Dave

      Chris Roberts as two Titans…. Maybe you should buy another one for future proofing!

      • Rainfox Wolfstone

        I hear if you put 2 of these together they become self aware, 48 Gigs of RAM something cool happens.

  • 3872Orcs

    I really hope we get something a bit more consumer friendly worth upgrading to in 2019 that will give me boost in performance over the current 1080Ti I have now.

    • Dave

      Um lets face it you are not going to get a lot better than a 2080Ti and Titan RTX in 2019 and I don’t see the price going down a hell of a lot either. As for performance the 2080Ti I hear gives 20% increase in ‘some’ games but a lot of games the difference is marginal. So I wouldn’t hold on to hope, it will kick you up the backside and push you down the stairs… Good luck though!

      • David

        There is one possibility – even if it may appear small. AMD ^_^. Actually I think there is a solid chance they could really kick some tail in 2019 and re-enter the both the CPU and GPU markets as top dogs, in part because they’re gunning for it and also because their competition seems keen to sleep on their laurels.

        • Baldrickk

          They don’t seem inclined (or maybe capable?) of matching the high end performance of the high end 10 series GPU cards. Their latest and greatest improves slightly on the performance of the GTX1060.
          Ryzen is a great choice for CPU, and AMD are definitely worth considering if you are after a mid-range graphics card.

          For high end graphics, Nvidia are still pretty much the only game in town – unfortunately. I’d like to see more competition in that space.

    • Lucidfeuer

      Their is no significant boost or changes between the 2080ti and the 1080ti, you did the best choice.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Man, you’re bitching about your 1080TI while real consumers are even looking at a 1060 as their card as $260+ is way too much for regular mainstream consumers..

      • Ok…So people who own the 1080Ti should just shut up about the ludicrous price that the 2080Ti is selling for because some people can’t get/afford a 1060? I own a 1080Ti and I’m pissed that I would have to spend $1200 to get a nominal upgrade, but hey, because some people can’t afford this and that, my opinion isn’t valid. I’ve respected a lot of your posts in the past, but dang, this one…this one takes my respect for you down a couple pegs.

        • Xron

          He doesn’t understand that 2060 might be 349 or 399, then he will start to get annoyed…
          People just be more understandable to each other.
          Titan is for Pro sumers and some really rich guys.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            I do understand the 2060 will propably be around the pricepoint you say, and YES, that’s way too much for not even a f-ing midrange (in the 20xx line) GPU. And I agree, we’ll see what Navi will bring, but don’t get your hope up..

        • Andrew Jakobs

          You’re talking about ‘consumer friendly’, the current 1060+ cards haven’t been ‘consumer friendly’, but more ‘enthusiast friendly’. When you talk about ‘consumer’ I immediately think about mainstream consumer. Ofcourse you can be pissed that it would require $1200 for a nominal upgrade. And in the land of GPU’s we’ve seen that it seems to take a long time before a decent upgrade is available at a decent price.
          You seem to think you’re a regular consumer, but a 1080ti is not really a card for a regular consumer, it’s more a card for the enthusiast.
          That’s the problem with a lot of enthusiasts (I see it happen on a lot of these ‘tech’ forums), they think they are the regular joe/consumer, when they are clearly not. Ofcourse being an enthusiast isn’t the problem, it’s great you have such passion and are willing to spend such an amount of money on a GPU (in this case), but talking about ‘consumer friendly’ prices when even an 1080ti isn’t a ‘consumer friendly’ price, is what got to me.

          • Young K Kim

            yes I agree with you. I read the article saying GTX1080ti user before RTX came out was less than 1% of all the GPU card sold in the consumer market. Therefore, I don’t think nvida is being too much care about the high price of RTX2080Ti at this moment.

      • Rob H

        People who buy 1080tis or 2080tis are still consumers. He didn’t say “I really hope we get something a bit more average consumer friendly”, he literally just said “more consumer friendly”, and was correct to do so in the point he was making. Doesn’t matter if you’re buying a GTX 750 or an RTX 2080 ti, they’re both consumers. I really don’t understand why on earth you suddenly decide he’s not a “real consumer” because you don’t understand simple wording apparently – its like arguing that neither of you have any right to speak because in fact the mobile market for graphics is actually the most mainstream so nothing else matters. Utterly pathetic argument to make.

  • shimigami

    Fuck monopolies.

  • For artists, apart from the huge 24GB VRAM, which I assume is this cards selling point to those it matters to, would get about 80% faster rendering (CUDA) with 2 x 2080 Ti in non sli and for the same price as one Titan.
    So I think this card targets broadcast studio’s that need 4k / 8k resolution GPU renders with huge textures. Then again, the average artist is happy with the price/performance ratio of multiple 1080 Ti’s as they increase performance in a linear scale.

  • What a monster graphics card!

  • MadMax1998

    Yes! You called it VirtuaLink! o/ (It’s actually “VirtualLink”.)

  • I think my next card is their 2070 RTX. I just need to see it for a bit under $500 to pull the trigger. Might be the last card I buy for a LONG time to come.

    • Rob H

      If you’ve got $500 to spend, I’d recommend getting a 2nd hand 1080 ti instead. Contrary to popular belief, you can still get 2nd hand cards with warranties and ex-miner cards are absolutely fine as they’ll have been undervolted and are actually a far more reliable purchase than an ex-‘gamer GPU’. Of course you’re free to spend your money on whatever you want though.

  • JesperL

    Crazy – almost makes the 2080ti look cheap lol.

  • theonlyrealconan

    I am sure AMD’s new card will compete with it. (Don’t i wish. Sigh.)

    • Jistuce

      In a performance-per-dollar metric? Probably right.

  • oompah

    wonderful, if these r available
    however run these @720p and see these fly