In the last few weeks there were posts from different tech related websites that an unknown sender had sent them "stuff" with notes that muttered the same thing over and over again. "Two better than one." Many people figured out that those articles were sent to them from a marketing company related to AMD. Most people assumed that a dual GPU monstrosity is going to be unveiled from AMD in the coming days. While we haven't yet heard any concrete information about such release, there have been rumors of a R9 295x that will house two R9 290x GPUs in one heck of a dual headed monster card. The first thing that came to...must have been more than 99% of the people who heard that news is "How the heck is AMD going to cool that thing? They cannot even cool one GPU properly." But it seems AMD is bringing a hybrid cooling solution - air and closed loop water cooling - just like the iChill GeForce GTX 780 Accelero Hybrid card. Again, all this information floating around the web is just speculation.
But at GPU Technology Conference (or GTC), NVidia - out of nowhere - revealed that they are coming out with a dual GK110 based card. The forthcoming of a dual GK110 card is not surprising news as a month or so ago this news was also floating around the web. But NVidia just released the Titan Black Edition and the talk about the dual GK110 went away. And then the release of the Maxwell based GTX750 card also turned the discussion into another direction and a lot of people became more interested in Maxwell cards than a card based on dual GK110 chips. Besides, a dual GK110 card is nothing new. It's just two GK110 GPUs slapped on one PCB. You can get two GK110 single GPU cards instead. Not only the latter will be faster, they will overclock higher, run cooler, be cheaper and you can disable SLI if you need. AFAIK, you cannot disable SLI on a dual GPU card from the driver.
Anyways, so NVidia unveiled the dual GK110 card at GTC. It is going to be called the Titan Z. I don't know what Z stands for though. I'm sure you are eager to know about the specs, but let me tell you, don't bother asking. First, this card is carrying the Titan moniker; that automatically puts the card at $1000+. If a single GPU Titan is $1000, a dual Titan should cost north of $1500. Close to $2000. Heck, most people spend well below $1000 on their entire PC. $1500-2000 is crazy. BUT NO! It's not actually $1500-2000. It's $3000. THREE FRIGGIN' THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR A CONSUNER GRAPHICS CARD!
What is NVidia thinking? Is there a market for this? I assume that the people who buy a dual GPU card these days would be people who run mini-ITX rigs which can house only one graphics card. With a dual GPU graphics card, they can get the power of two GPUs in a small package which fits in that tiny chassis. But $3000?? Nobody's going to buy that. If you can plug in multiple graphics cards, again nobody's going to buy this. Heck, I'm not sure if people would buy it even at $2000.
On another note, it seems that NVidia is allowing card manufacturers to put 6GB on their non-Titan GK110 based cards. That completely destroys the position of Titan in a gaming rig. The only advantage the Titan will have over a 6GB GTX 780 Ti for example would be the better double precision floating point performance which a gamer doesn't need. Plus, these 6GB cards won't be that expensive than the regular 3GB cards either. If you want the performance of a dual GK110 card, I suggest that you invest in two of those 6GB babies. GTX780 or 780Ti 6GB - cannot go wrong with either choice.
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