14 DAY TRIAL // Onda certainly isn't a brand name that users outside of China will be familiar with, but the company stands behind one of the most impressive GTX 550 Ti designs that have surfaced by now, as its version of the card packs no less than 1.5GB of video buffer and a high factory overclock.
The first thing that pops into one's eye when taking a look at Onda's GTX 550 Ti is the massive cooling system employed by the company to keep the temperatures of the card in check.
This is comprised out of no less than six 6mm thick copper heatpipes that draw the heat from the GF116-400 core and into a massive heatsink that covers the whole PCB of the graphics card. Heat is then dissipated by a pair of 90mm fans.
As far as the PCB goes, this has been redesigned so it now features 4+2 phase power, four phases go to the GPU while the remaining two power the memory chips.
Throughout the board, Onda has used Sanyo tantalum polymer capacitors and other high quality components, and the company states that this design reduces the heat generated by the PCB by up to 47.3% while it also decreases the ripple by 329%.
Specs wise, the GPU operates at 1GHz while the 1.5GB of GDDR5 memory is run at 1100MHz (4.4GHz effective), although the chips used are rated as 0.4ns parts (5GHz).
To put things into perspective, Nvidia's stock clocks for the GTX 550 Ti are set at 900MHz for the core and 1025MHz for the memory.
At the heart of the GTX 550 Ti, lies the GF116-400 core that is comprised of 192 CUDA processors, 32 texturing units, 24 ROP units, and a 192-bit memory bus.
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.
Nvidia is expected to officially release the GeForce GTX 550 Ti sometime later today at an estimated retail price of $150 US. (via Beareyes)
