Originally posted by: Karaktu
Not stock, surely, but the idea here is that the memory is severely underclocked and can be overclocked with ease. The problem is, knowing the industry, they are probably using memory that didn't pass at higher frequencies on these boards.
There are differances between the way you would bin a memory card and the way you sell certain spec chips.
In this case the only verified report of memory chips on the GTO that I've seen is that they are at 1.1ns which is plenty fast enough to "overclock" to GTX speeds. If anyone wants to volunteer to remove thier heatsink and take a look at the memory chips, feel free
A manufacture of memory chips wouldn't sell chips that can't reach the speeds that they are specced for. If you are a card manufacture, and buying and paying for 1.1ns chips, you'd better get chips that are actually 1.1ns capable.
Now, EVGA's specs PDF say they are 1.2ns chips, which are a bit slower, but they should still have fairly decent room to overclock. Problems would happen though if the chips were 1.4ns specs, those are too slow to overclock to GTX specs unless you get really lucky.
In other words, with 1.1ns chips and similar, you aren't really "overclocking" the memory you are still within the range they officially support. With slower chips like 1.4ns you ARE taking a chance since the memory doesn't support those kinda speeds.
Speed breakdowns:
1.1ns should hit around 900 megahertz
1.2ns should hit around 800 megahertz
1.4ns should hit around 700 megahertz
These numbers are approximate, and I didn't take into account any extra cycles for using the memory (like system memory you'd see 2-2-5-8 or similar, those are all cycles that are used for a read or a write). But I did leave a bit of wiggle room. Also remember DDR is twice the speed effectivly.
And if you look at EVGA's specs sheets for instance, they use a 1.2ns chips in a GTX card with memory clocked at 800 mhz. They use 1.4ns chips on a 7950GT that has 725mhz memory.
Now look at the spec sheet again for the GTO. 1.2ns chips for the GTO but the memory clock is only 660mhz.
By EVGA's official specs, the memory is the EXACT SAME STUFF as the GTX!! So if they ship any other spec memory, they are violating thier specs. So I really dont think there's a need to worry about the memory you will receive.