GT 550M with 144 cores ??

Hi all,
Recently received my L702x with the following specs:
i5-2410M
17.3 HD+ WLED TL (1600x900)
8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM (2 x 4GB)
1G NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 550M

I am a little puzzled though, when i run GPU-Z and nvidia inspector It shows that my GT550 has 144 shaders instead of 96 and note in the screenshot the core speed is only 475? Am i missing something here or is this almost like a cutdown GT555? Anyone else have this strange issue?
Note: I have overclocked the core and memory a bit

 

I don't know if you are the same person of this thread:

XPS17 and NVIDIA GT550M - Laptop Video Forum - Laptop - Dell Community

if not then you are not alone

 

Ah sweet thanks, so it's not just me then, i was hoping some of the guys on this forums with the same GPU will be able to shed some light on this matter.

 

Maybe a glitch? Only the 555M is to have 144 but that has 1.5 GB VRAM.

Your core clocks will be downclocked when your system is idle.

 

Well I removed the beta nvidia drivers and put the default dell drivers on but it still shows the same 144 cores. Bizarre actually but I guess I shouldn't complain ;-)

 

Well you might want to test out those "extra" shaders. No point of jumping for joy if you possibly have a defective GPU.

 

Here are some benchmarks from 3dmark 06/vantage/11 using default settings and in some instances with an overclock from 475/900 to 500/940. It seems to run pretty well I must say, but I havent seen anyone else's 550 scores for comparison.

 

So did a bit more overclocking right up to the max that MSI afterburner can do on the core. Still no artifacting at these clocks which is great I also didnt push the memory too high. Got some pretty good results for a 550 I would think. Any comments?

 

Mine shows 144 unified as well. This is a pretty decent mobile video card and still performs strongly. It also runs very cool from what I've seen so far. Temps haven't gone above 66 degrees Celsius and regularly hovers around 60 while playing games.

 

Hey Corvette nice to see someone else is in the same boat as me , agreed i am totally loving the performance, it just makes me wonder are our cards locked GT555 or something. The card does run nice and cool, even with it overclocked to 620core and 980mem it still gets to about 62-66max degrees after an hours play of Crysis 2 awesome stuff

 

Sounds like you guys are getting 555Ms instead of 550M. The 550M has 96 cores and the clockspeed is much higher (about 740Mhz).

 

I am on the same boat. L702x with GT 550 with 144 cores. Is that normal?

 

Just received xps 17 3d, i7-2720qm, 4gb, 500gb, GT 500m and also have 144 shaders..

 

Same here GT 550 and 144 cuda cores.

 

3DMark06 scores:
By default: 9352
OC 620/1240/960: 11366
Not bad

 

Nice to see there are more of us with these cards, I wonder why there is still no information on a 144 core GT550 information anywhere on the net about it. Nice scores Yarosus, pretty similar score to what i was getting overclocked, couldn't push my memory past 980 though, which is still pretty impressive.

 

I pass memory to 1040, but difference in 3dmark06 was in couple points.
I believe we can OC core speed more and probably until 760. But with MSI afterburner we can't. Anybody know some other good OC tools???

 

still not close to a standard GT555M.
mine score just out of the box 12221. no OC or anything else.

 

You have non-3d display.
With 3D dispay and stock GT 555M you will get about 11300 in 3dmark 2006

 

EVGA Precision allows you to increase the core clock to 760 but the screen goes black. I suspect this is because the voltage is underclocked for the card so hopefully someone figures out a way to unlock the voltage. Right now I'm testing the stability with a core clock of 680.

 

So it looks everyone with a 550m sees 144 Shaders. Mine too. The question is, does anyone with a 550m see 96 shaders?

BTW, I get 10096 3DMarks06 900P 2630 8GB stock.

Also a couple of questions about OC. If you OC your card will it still clock down if not high frequency needed? If you have later on to submit your laptop for guarantee repairs is there a way for DELL to find out that you were OCing once you remove your OC program?

 

Did you test system in 3dmark06 after OC core to 680?
Will tested at night today)

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...ds/545708-gt-550m-no-faster-than-gt-445m.html

this maybe correct, a standard revision of the gt550m

 

Well I think that nvidia start produce new revision of GT 550m.

 

So new result.
After OC 720/1440/950
in 3DMark06 - 12120
in 3DMark11 - P1457

 

Nice one Yarosus, I will install EVGA Precision tonight and see if i can get my core up as well. Thanks for the update.

 

BTW, I see the Core1 of the CPU reaching a max temp of 91 after 3dmark06 (on idle it hovers on 48-51). Is that normal?

 

I agree, here's my "Stock" and "OC" scores, it doesn't look like the 550M matches the 555M

3DMark Scores

You can be the judge if your 550M is the same as a 555M

 

It's definately not as quick as the 555m that's for sure. This is what I was able to push from 720/1440/980 in 3dmark06 on 550. Still it would be good to compare to someone with a GT550M with 96 cores. Has anyone actually got a 550m with 96 cores?

UPDATE: new screenshot with Vantage Scores.

 

It would be better if everyone can clarify which screen they have when posting 3Dmark06 scores, as the 900p runs on 1280x800 on default settings while the 1020p runs on 1280x1024 pm default settings, so they get two quite different results.

 

Sorry I have the 900p screen using default settings on all 3dmark applications.

 

I run at 1280x1024, all by default. I have 3D display.
3DMark06 on GT550m after OC - 12120.
Temerature always below 67 in crysis 2, and armrest isn't hot. Runs pretty cold for me.
Stock GT555m with 3D dispay and res 1280x1024 will get result in 3DMark06 about 11300, but can be OC 20%
And I heard that GT555M is running very hot.

 

I think what most of us really got is an underclocked GT 555m; I'd really like to know if there is a way to unlock the full power of this card. Why are there 2 different 550m cards?

 

the gt555m runs cooler then the gt550m.

 

Yes, the GT555M is a far superior card to the GT550M. Interesting though. That would mean that the two chips are pin-compatible and that opens up an upgradeability avenue for people with the L502X.

 

Does System Information show 144 CUDA cores? You can find this on the NVIDIA Control Panel.

 

Yes it does.

 

nice news guys i think dell ordered a bunch of just gt 555m and just lock the bios for it to ship as gt 550m but now they got lazy so they just ship it as default

anyways so the max core u are finding is 720 or 780?

 

Well, there are other differences besides the frequency, so I dont think Dell is doing this but NVidia. The 555m has 24 ROPs vs 16 on the 550m, and a 192 width memory bus vs 128 in the 550m.

The question then (that I also asked in the overclocking 555m thread) is if there is a real physical difference on the chips when Nvidia sell different configs that vary on Clock Freq but that contain the same chip. For example 525m vs 540m (Chip GF108) or 550 vs 555m (Chip GF106). Does the lower config have some kind of objective quality measure that doesn’t allow it to run at higher speeds or Nvidia is just lowering the frequencies (and in the case of the 550m disabling some ROPs) to extend into different price scales?

 

Since the 525M easily runs at 540M speeds I'd guess that it's an artificial change to allow for multiple pricing tiers.

 

But the question is not so much if it can reach the base speed, but can a 525m be "safely" overclocked to the same overclocked speed of a 540 (same 550 vs 555m)?

 

I've installed MSI Afterburner and the 144 shader gt 550m works stable at 620 core / 980 memory, with temperatures not rising above 66 degrees C.

Here's my question:
Does anybody know what temperature should not be exceeded to be 99,9% sure that the gpu will not fail during the economical lifetime (+/- 3 years)?
In other words, is 66 degrees C an acceptable long-term temperature for this gpu?
If not, what temperature should I not exceed?
If so, what temperature should not be exceeded?

I hope some of you have some information about this!

With kind regards,

 

hmm, I received my xps 17 a few days ago with the same card, does anyone know if its performance is superior or inferior than the actual nvidia gt 550m graphic card? It runs pretty hot when I was playing TF2 even without oc it.

 

Safely in what sense? They are the same silicon, perhaps run at different voltages and capable of different speeds at different voltages but neither will be "damaged" more or less at the same voltage and frequency.

 

i assume it would be slightly better , i am waiting for my GT550 to arrive and hope it has the 144 cores

 

anyone else had this GT550 with 144 cores

 

Mine lists with 144 as well.

 

mine also has the 144 cores as well.

could this be a mistake ie could the software be reading the number of cores incorrectly or do these cards really have 144 cores.

 

You could run the shader tests in a benchmark (such as 3dmark vantage) and make a comparison.

The likelyhood is the software reading it incorrectly.

 

that makes no sense though as the core speed on these dell GT550 are lower than what they should be - ie they are around the GT555 speeds