64K The $3,000 Titan Z that you are referring to was a dual GPU GK110 card and it was indeed laughable since you could buy a pair of Titan Blacks that outperformed it for about $1,000 less.



Nvidia is so predictable and yet people still struggle with their formula. Release the Titan version first for an inflated price and then release the x80 Ti for what looks like a reasonable price in comparison but really isn't a reasonable price. Going all the way back to Kepler there were people on tech sites posting that the GTX 680 was the Flagship Kepler as far as a gaming GPU and there would be no other strictly gaming high end GPU similar to the Titan and some were saying buy the Titan for these reasons. The 680 was a mid range GPU and you had to look no further than W1zzard's review of it to clearly see that. From his GTX 680 review closing page:



"Technically we'd have to compare it to GTX 560 Ti, not GTX 580."



Right here on TPU were some well respected members saying that Nvidia wouldn't release a high end 1080 Ti GPU even a few months ago.

Haha ikr. The 680 is a funny story in itself - Nvidia thought it would beat the 7970 easily, but didn't realize that AMD had simply rushed the card out before the drivers were ready. By the end of 2012 AMD had added a full 20%+ performance through drivers, and by now the 680 indeed performs about at 7870 levels.As for the Titan, I always found it comical. Nvidia somehow convinced everyone that the Titan series was a series separate from the normal graphics cards, and that if you bought one you would have the strongest card available for 2 years straight. However it was only 40% stronger than the 7970 GHz!, and so how anyone could believe that 40% would make it the strongest for 2 years is beyond me.The sad fact is that Nvidia COULD make a card worthy of the name "Titan", they just have chosen not to. If the OG Titan in early 2013 had 3072 Cores, 6GB of 7000 MHz GDDR5, 1200MHz core clocks, and dual 8-pin connectors it would have been the strongest card until 2015.Even now they COULD have released a Titan card with 16GB HBM2, 3840 Cores, 2000 MHz core clocks, and dual 8-pins that just destroys everything for years to come. I would have payed $1000 for it too...