Graphics Just got a ATi 9550.... cooling&OC..

Hiya.

I picked up a Gigabyte ATi Radeon 9550 for my second PC and me's got some questions:

1.Will the Arctic ATi Silencer 1 fit it?
2. I've heard of a BIOS mod that'll turn it into a 9600PRO or XT (Hynix 4ms memory )
3. What should I expect from the card? (performance)

Cheers,
Mike

 

1. Not sure: probably will do. 9550s are basically the same as 9600s, so whatever is compatible with those hopefully.

2. Info

3. 9600 performance

 

Thank you my good man!

Now if you'd tell me where I can get a left side panel for a Antec Aria, I could start my BlackHawk project


Cheers,
Mike

 

Have you broken the original or something?

 

Naah, I just don't wan't cut up the original one


Cheers,
Mike

 

You will need the VGA Silencer ATI2, which fits 9600/9550.

Well your starting off with basically the performance of a Radeon 9200, but with DirectX9.0. Im assuming your card clocks are 250mhz core / 200mhz memory.
The core should clock like mad out of the box, my friend has his 9550 @ 430mhz core, on the stock passive cooling. The memory isn't very fast and chances are that you won't get alot out of it. probably only 20-30mhz or so..

 

Alright now, will the ATi Silencer2 fit inside my beloved Antec Aria?

The 9800XT from my second PC (with the busted LanParty2 ) fits painlessly.
And will it fit for sure on my Gigabyte 9550? I've heard that different producers use different layouts of the caps, could that be a problem?


Cheers,
Mike

P.S.
Forgive any blah-blah-blah found in my text, I'm half awaik

 

Yes, the ATI2 should fit your card (read: http://www.pccasegear.com/ac_compatibilitypdf.pdf)

Its a 2-slot cooler, so If you have a spare slot on the GPU side of the card, it should fit easy. The silencer is only a little bit longer then the card afaik, so as long as the graphics card fits in your case, there shouldn't be any issues fitting it in, provided you have that spare slot.

 

Spare slot's are'nt the problem, height is.

Is it much higher than the card?


Cheers,
Mike

 

**Image Alert**

Should help you....

 

Thank you my good man!


Cheers,
Mike

 

As mentioned the 9550 uses the same core as the 9600 and should therefore be capable of up to 550mhz with good cooling. However I would suspect ATI (or the card manu) use things like latency and voltage to help prevent the lower spec cards o/c'ing (eg 9700 could very often clock higher once flashed to a 9700PRO).

Even so the memory is really going to be your bottleneck, thankfully the 4ns RAM on your card should be capable of running around 250mhz (500 DDR) which should really help over the stock 200mhz (400 DDR) esp with a faster clocked core. For reference the 9600Pro=400/600 and 9600XT=500/600 (both quoting DDR value for the RAM).

Anyway the only thing is to try it and see, as always take small steps, test thoroughly and avoid leaving it too near the absolute limit. Good luck!

 

Thanks.

It'll be my second ATi card I'll be tinkering with so it won't be new ground.
As soon as I get mt ATi Silencer2 and a LEFT panel for my Aria I'll start clocking the card and my project.


Cheers,
Mike