14 DAY TRIAL // Although almost all of the GeForce's GTX 550 Ti graphics card specifications have been made public, its overclocking potential remained something of a mystery. This, however, changed recently, as a GPU-Z screenshot picturing the core running at 1150MHz made its way onto the Web.
The screenshot was provided by a user of the Xfastest website and presents the GTX 550 Ti running at 28% more than its standard core clock, while the memory works at a 10% higher frequency.
As GPU-Z reports, the new memory clock raises the memory bandwidth available to the GPU to 108GB/s, from the 98.4GB/s available in the reference version.
No details about the cooling or about the manufacturer of the card were available, but this screenshot supports Nvidia's claims regarding the high overclockability of the GTX 550 Ti.
The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is going to be officially launched on March 15 and the card is based on the GF116-400 core which packs 192 CUDA cores, 32 texturing units, 24 ROP units and a 192-bit wide memory bus.
The GPU's reference clock is set at 900MHz, while the 1GB of GDDR5 memory runs at 4,100MHz, providing 70% more bandwidth than the GTS 450, the graphics card it is meant to replace.
In addition, the GTX 550 Ti has a TDP of only 116W (10W more than the GTS 450), features two-way SLI support, two dual-link DVI-I ports and one mini HDMI port.
Performance wise, the GTX 550 Ti is expected to sit right between the GTS 450 and the GTX 460 768MB, and Nvidia says it delivers 20% better performance per watt than the GTS 450 as well as 28% faster performance.
When compared to AMD's Radeon HD 5770, the Santa Clara-based company claims that its upcoming graphics card is between 18% and 50% faster, depending on the benchmark run.
