Just to throw a spanner in the works, I believe the 996s( in the uk anyway) most certainly does have Ti Rods. The engines were just sps engines left over and were already built up.
The difference is actually the injector configuration in some way.

Just being polite:D
Hello and welcome....

996S
 

Is it red?

You can throw as many spanners as you like :)
AFAIK some S models did have Ti rods and they were engines straight from the SPS. But this wasn't the intended spec, and the S shouldn't have Ti rods. I think the confusion started when the early bikes came out and the magazines reviewing them were told/found that they had the Ti rods. We had a fairly lengthy discussion about this before and came to the conclusion that they don't have Ti rods, but some people just got lucky :)

This is for the UK spec bike.