Overclocking The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti Graphic Card

Posted by on March 20, 2011. Computer Stuff, Motherboard, Overclocking, Processors, VGA - 1 Comment

NVIDIA launches a new card in the mid-range segment as the GeForce GTX 550 Ti got revealed today. The GTX 550 Ti is based on the GF116 chipset and, like the GF110 and GF114, will undergo a transistor-level
rework to provide for better performance at a lower wattage. The GTX 550 Ti will be the direct successor to the GTS 450, though it is interesting to note it carries the GTX tag and not GTS which could mean the performance level of the new card is considerably better. The GTX 550 Ti will be up to 35% faster in DX 11 than an AMD Radeon HD 5770 and up to 20% faster in DX 10. It is looking like the GTX 550 Ti will be comparable to the GTX 460 line. The card will have a 128-bit memory bus and 1GB of GDDR5 memory, plus two dual-link DVI ports and a mini HDMI port. Maximum TDP is expected to be 110W. This $ 149 card is
fast enough to run most of today’s titles without noticeable slowdowns, and affordable Should Be Enough for most value-conscious gamers looking for a budget card to play games with.

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti is the latest in the Fermi lineup, and while it may share a similar naming scheme as the GTX 560 Ti, it does have some distinct differences, not the least of which is a considerably lower price tag. Costing about $150 for the reference and slightly more for the custom versions from board partners, this creates a very interesting scenario, as it sits alone amongst current-gen cards at this price point. There is no 6000 series AMD card that can compete, so Nvidia is breaking new ground here by
offering what appears to be a very compelling product for gamers on a modest budget. One of the interesting things about the launch of the GTX 550 Ti is there will be several models available from Nvidia partners simultaneously, and this one is from Gigabyte. Bringing a custom cooler and a factory overclock today is quite exciting if you’re in the market for a new graphics card that won’t break the bank.
While the GTX 550 performs wonderfully at lower Ti Resolutions, may remain some people unsatisfied with its default performance. So by overclocking the GTX 550 Ti, you could managed to obtain some additional speed increase is. But how much faster could the card be?

Here is the comparison:

NVIDIA GTX 550
Specification:
Streaming Multiprocessors : 4
Stream Processors (CUDA Cores) : 192
Texture Units : 32
ROP Units : 24
Graphics Clock : 900 MHz
Shader Clock : 1800 MHz
Memory Clock (effective) : 4104 MHz
Memory Size : 1024 MB
Memory Type : GDDR5
Memory Interface : 192-bit
Codename : GF116
Fabrication Process : 40 nm
Transistor Count : 1:17 Billion
Die Size : 228 mm ²
Power Connectors : 6-pin
Recommended Min Power Supply : 400 Watts
Thermal Design Power (TDP) : 116 Watts
GPU Thermal Threshold : 95 ° C
DirectX Version : 11
Bus Support : PCIe 2.0 x16

NVIDIA GTS 450 Ti
Streaming Multiprocessors : 4
Stream Processors (CUDA Cores) : 192
Texture Units : 32
ROP Units : 16
Graphics Clock : 783 MHz
Shader Clock : 1566 MHz
Memory Clock (effective) : 3608 MHz
Memory Size : 1024 MB
Memory Type : GDDR5
Memory Interface : 128-bit
Codename : GF106
Fabrication Process : 40 nm
Transistor Count : 1:17 Billion
Die Size : 228 mm ²
Power Connectors : 6-pin
Recommended Min Power Supply : 400 Watts
Thermal Design Power (TDP) : 106 Watts
GPU Thermal Threshold : 100 ° C
DirectX Version : 11
Bus Support : PCIe 2.0 x16

The core of a Ti GeForce GTX 550 is clocked at a Relatively high 900 MHz by default. It’s not surprising then, if some manufacturers decided to release pre-overclocked versions of the GTX 550 Ti with clock speeds of More Than 1000 MHz. Would a reference GTX 550 Ti be Able to reach that kind of speed?

Overclocking
The test subjects are the Galaxy GTX 550 Ti and Ti Sonic Palit GTX 550. NVIDIA Inspector was the tool of choice. Here’s how we
overclocked EACH card:

Galaxy GTX 550 Ti
The Galaxy 550 Ti was overclocked under two different conditions.
First, the overclocking was carried out without changing the fan mode (Leaving it at the auto) and voltage settings. This way, we managed to increase of the core and memory speed to 972 MHz and 4800 MHz,
respectively.

For the second attempt, we maximized the fan speed and increased the core voltage to its maximum limit of 1150 V. Such more aggressive move pushed the core and memory clock to 1015 MHz Further and 4920 MHz.

Palit GTX 550 Sonic Ti
This card already comes pre-overclocked with a standard core frequency of 1000 MHz and a memory clock of 4400 MHz. We decided to immediately employ more advanced methods (by that we ,mean increasing the fan
speed to maximum and bumping up the voltage to 1150 V), to overclock this card and ended up with 1080 MHz for the core and 4920 MHz for the memory. Let’s move on to performance testing to see how much
additional speed that we have gained through these overclocking attempts.

Test Platform
The Following hardware combination was Used in our test. Scores from other graphics cards are Also included in the final chart for comparison purposes.
* Processor: Intel Core i7 930 @ 4 GHz (200 × 20)
* Motherboard: Gigabyte X58A-UD3R
* Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX 500 & GTX 400 Series: AMD Radeon HD 6000 & HD 5700 Series
* Memory: 3 × 2GB Kingston HyperX blu. (@ 1600 MHz, 1.64 V)
* Storage: Kingston SSDNow V + Series 64 GB & SSDNow V Series 30 GB (no- RAID Configuration)
* Power Supply: Coolermaster Silent Pro 800 Watt Gold
* Heatsink: Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus
* Monitor: Philips 221E
* Input Devices: Genius (Keyboard and Mouse)
* OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
* Driver: ForceWare 266.58, 266.66 (NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti), 267.59 (NVIDIA GTX 550 Ti); Catalyst Hotfix 11.1a

Conclusions
Getting past the 1 GHz “barrier” with the GTX 550 Ti is possible, but not that easy. Success depends on the HSF’s ability to suppress the heat and the overclockability of the individual graphics chips themselves. In our attempts, we needed to increase of the voltage before we could bump the speed beyond 1 GHz. The memory chips are quite overclockable, considering the fact that they are not equipped with any HSF on top.
As for the performance increase is, the overclocks yielded satisfying results. In perform certain games, at 1920 × 1080, the frame rates were the resource persons Increased to More Than 30 FPS. Games that
already ran at 30 FPS prior to the overclock gained additional frames per second, resulting in smoother gameplay. There are factory-overclocked GTX 550 Variants of the Ti, most of which are clocked at 1000 MHz or above by default. These cans be your choice if you do not wish to meddle in all the overclocking complications, but That extra speed-the which cans Otherwise be obtained by manually overclocking a standard card is just like We did in this article comes with an extra-price. By overclocking the card yourself, you cans get the additional speed increase is without paying an extra. But, As We mentioned above, there is no guarantee that your GTX 550 Ti cans be overclocked to match the frequencies of pre-overclocked GTX 550 Ti cards.

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