This certainly is not the first overclocking orientated GP107-400 based video card we have taken for a joy ride, but we must admit to being impressed with what the GTX 150Ti Gaming X 4GB can do. While it is indeed true that MSI factory overclocks their card by 6.9 percent (to 1493MHz in ‘OC mode’) we were easily able to hit the NVIDIA enforced voltage wall long before this particular card had reached its true potential. Yes, we know it can go even higher but barring a hardware mod you can reasonably expect all GTX 1050Ti Gaming X 4GB’s to hit 1,900Mhz and pretty much stay there. That certainly is a nice ‘little’ boost to say the least. It however only exacerbates the anemic 128-bit bus issue that all GTX 1050Ti’s come with.
Since NVIDIA really does not want people pushing their GTX 1050Ti’s to the limit the experienced overclocker knows the biggest gain comes from pushing the RAM. Basically, their bus is the weak link and does starve the GP107-400 processor during high demand tasks. As such that is where we focused most of our efforts… and the end results do speak for themselves. You see we actually ran into another artificial overclocking wall – namely we could not push past 2002Mhz (actual speed, aka ‘8008Mhz’ in marketing speak)!
That still represents a whopping 227Mhz of additional (14 percent) speed over reference (1752MHz actual) GDDR5 speeds, and 12.8% over the factory RAM settings of 1775Mhz. That turns a card capable of a piddly little 113.7GB/s into a card with a memory throughput of 128.1GB/s. Though that is still significantly lower than what a GTX 1060 (192.2GB/s) or what similar AMD cards can do… but it does so without a large increase in heat or even increased noise.
That is pretty darn good for a card that only costs $30 more than a stock GTX 150Ti… and the results shown above do speak for themselves. Now if only MSI would create an old school ‘Lightening Edition’ that thumbs its nose at NVIDIA and their mandatory maximums. That would truly be a thing of beauty. Until such a time that MSI decides that they no longer want any more GeForce cores from NVIDIA this card is about as close as you will find to such Nirvana.
