Gigabyte GTX 550 Ti not overclocking well enough?

[clairvoux]

Hey! I just bought a Gigabyte GTX 550 Ti, and I´ve been messeing around with the clocks to see how much i can overclock it with MSI Afterburner. I hit a wall at 1025mhz/2050mhz/2530mhz.

I was surprised to see these guys here: http://www.pureoverclock.com/review.php?id=1237&page=15 taking the core to 1090 mhz, when i couldn´t get more than 1025 without driver failure. I was also surprised to see that i could nuke the memory clocks to a whooping 2530mhz without a single artifact or failure, when the same guys could take it only to 2250mhz.

I´d like to know why, being the same card I am getting such different max clocks. And by the way, I haven´t touched the voltages yet.

 

[Fortunex]

Every card is different. GPU cut from a different wafer of silicon has more/less impurities or whatever you want to call them.

Every computer part has some variance like that, sometimes there's a lot sometimes there isn't.

 

[clairvoux]

But, its still made from the same manufacturer, Gigabyte. There shouldnt be so much difference, right? I was thinking of buggy drivers?

 

[Fortunex]

The manufacturer does not matter because the GPUs are all made by nVidia's manufacturer, then shipped to Gigabyte, etc., where they assemble the cards/PCBs (generally). There could be a golden chip that hits 1200MHz and a chip that's faulty and doesn't even work at all on the same silicon wafer.

 

[clairvoux]

And BTW. Why the hell is GPU-Z telling me the default clocks are 18184mhz/540mhz/18184mhz?! GPU clocks seem to be displaying correctly though....

And why Technology, Die size, Transistors, Release date, Direct X support and Texture fillrate are shown as "UNKNOWN" values in GPU-Z?

 

[clairvoux]

The manufacturer does not matter because the GPUs are all made by nVidia's manufacturer, then shipped to Gigabyte, etc., where they assemble the cards/PCBs (generally). There could be a golden chip that hits 1200MHz and a chip that's faulty and doesn't even work at all on the same silicon wafer.

Thanks for clearing that out

As a last question, raising voltages would be any beneficial, or it is just not worth the risk?