xps GT550 GPU has more cores than it should

[sunshinewelly]

I bought a xps laptop with a GT550m GPU - this card is meant to have 96 cuda cores (shaders) as standard as the next model up the GT555 has 144 cores etc.

however when i ran diagnostics the card in my system which is still called the GT550 has 144 cores and runs at a similar core speed as the GT555. the GT550 runs a lot faster but has less cores.

looking online it seems that lots of people who have this card also have the same 144 cores.

so what is going on here, have nvidea simply renamed the GT555 as the GT550 for dell which allows dell to sell the same GPU at both a lower price as the GT550 or as an upgrade and an increased price as the GT555

 

[Meaker]

What's happened is that Nvidia have lost the naming plot. It's maybe a case of Dell being more honest.

GT555M comes in several flavours:

144 shaders, 24 rops, 192bit DDR3
144 shaders, 16 rops, 128bit DDR3
96 shaders, 4 rops, 128bit GDDR5

The last one is actually a different core (the same one used by the 540m and below).

Now instead of using the 128bit DDR3 version and CALLING it a 555m (as a few others have done), they dropped it down by 5 to show the effect of lower performance. OFc there is already a card called that.....

However at the end of the day the performance should be similar and its a lot less ROP bound, also the potential OC performance gains are good.

IMO it should always have been a 144 shader, 16rop, 128bit GDDR5 card. That way it would have performed well but not stepped on the toes of the 460M.