Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti Review: Bridging The Budget Gap

[verbalizer]

I'm must be confused.

You've got the 450 that gets an absolute beat down by the 6850 at the same price or the 5770 at a substantial savings with similar performance.

I just don't see it.. maybe I'm blind.

some people just prefer nVidia to ATi/AMD and if the card is in the same range as the ATi/AMD competitor
I'll take the nVidia option.
CUDA, PHYS-X, tessellation and I like the new drivers better than ATi/AMD.

 

[ubercake]

Why doesn't Toms include BFBC2 in every benchmark??? This game is huge!???

 

[saikyan]

[citation][nom]ubercake[/nom]Why doesn't Toms include BFBC2 in every benchmark??? This game is huge!???[/citation]

Totally agree, they should include more popular titles. People want to know how the games they play will perform... Ditch mediocre benchmark titles like HAWX, AVP and Lost Planet 2 and replace with BC2, Starcraft 2, and Civ V.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]saikyan[/nom]...replace with BC2, Starcraft 2, and Civ V.[/citation]

StarCraft 2 is a CPU benchmark, Civ V doesn't need much in the way of FPS to be playable, BC2 is kinda easy on the graphics hardware.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]masterofevil22[/nom]I'm must be confused. You've got the 450 that gets an absolute beat down by the 6850 at the same price or the 5770 at a substantial savings with similar performance. I just don't see it.. maybe I'm blind.[/citation]

You *ARE* confused. I think you meant 550, not 450...

 

[silverblue]

Got an e-mail from NVIDIA today, and it reads as follows:

New Hardware Launch: The GeForce GTX 550 Ti
Just in time for Crysis 2, we are excited to announce the new GeForce GTX 550 Ti, capable of powering through the 2023 alien-infested streets of New York at over 40fps at 1680x1050 on ‘Advanced’ settings.

GeForce GTX 550 Ti is available in stores today for $149 and offers 28% faster performance over the recent GeForce GTS 450. For the GeForce 8600 GT owners out there who have been waiting to upgrade, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti offers 5x more performance over your GPU and supports DirectX 11 gaming.
Learn More >

How To Build A Kick-Ass Crysis 2 PC For Under $600
You don’t have to sell your kidney to afford a gaming rig that can handle the visually-breathtaking Crysis 2. Using the new GeForce GTX 550 Ti, we show how you can build a sub $600 PC that can run the highly-anticipated game like a champ.
Read the Guide >

I know they're allowed to inflate the performance results a little, but these results would be for the 3rd party OCed products and not a vanilla product.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]silverblue[/nom]Got an e-mail from NVIDIA today, and it reads as follows:I know they're allowed to inflate the performance results a little, but these results would be for the 3rd party OCed products and not a vanilla product.[/citation]

Actually, Crysis 2 seems to favor the GeForces a little, and the reference 550 Ti can pull 40 FPS at 1680x1050 on advanced settings according to our tests. Our Crysis 2 benchmarks should be published tomorrow.

 

[silverblue]

Ignore me... I keep confusing the benchmarks of the simulated reference card with those of the overclocked variants. NVIDIA's own testing suite (on the first link) probably adds up to that sort of performance boost.

In fact, the e-mail they sent me is mostly what you already had on page one of this review, so nothing new.

 

[verbalizer]

but if you already have a GTS450 like I do (MSI Cyclone), then would you upgrade to this..?

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]malmental[/nom]but if you already have a GTS450 like I do (MSI Cyclone), then would you upgrade to this..?[/citation]

Hell no. Don't bother with less than a 6870/GTX 560 Ti.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]silverblue[/nom] NVIDIA's own testing suite (on the first link) probably adds up to that sort of performance boost.[/citation]

yeah. I'm pretty sure they'd use games and settings that show the card in a favorable light. That's why independent benches are probably preferable.

 

[silverblue]

Oh, there's no probably about it.

 

[bstm300]

The 550 Ti performs worse than the 5770, yet is priced $10-20 more. This makes absolutely no sense and leaves me very disappointed. Nvidia would have been smarter if they'd have held off on the 550 in order to keep selling the 460.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

[citation][nom]Belardo[/nom]- Stupid model names!? GeForce was given to the series. So WTF is GFX good for? If the 550 is almost the bottom end... why not GTS like the GTS 450 or GTS 250? There is no consistency. It doesn't donate feature sets. "TI" okay... What is the difference between a TI and a NON TI card? Oh yeah, the letters on the box and in bios, nothing else. Why bother?We know Nivdia will most likely skip the 600 series (What happened to the 300s?) so they too can be "7s" with ATI.[/citation]

I know I've suggested this before, but if you're this disgruntled and perplexed, and if this is honestly the reason you "don't buy GeForce cards anymore", I think you may just be better off not buying discrete graphics cards. That way you won't have to deal with all the stress and confusion involved in those deceptive naming schemes. It's probably for your own good.

 

[silverblue]

If you're ever confused, just check a review like this one which will show you any number of cards, then just do a price check. The name should only be a tool for finding the card you want.

 

[verbalizer]

The 550 Ti performs worse than the 5770, yet is priced $10-20 more. This makes absolutely no sense and leaves me very disappointed. Nvidia would have been smarter if they'd have held off on the 550 in order to keep selling the 460.

totally incorrect.

 

[verbalizer]

I know I've suggested this before, but if you're this disgruntled and perplexed, and if this is honestly the reason you "don't buy GeForce cards anymore", I think you may just be better off not buying discrete graphics cards. That way you won't have to deal with all the stress and confusion involved in those deceptive naming schemes. It's probably for your own good.

^+1

 

[ww2003]

Looks to be a good card for a gap closer.

 

[lccc37]

OMG, I think I should sell my GTS450. I buy two pieces of GIGABYTE GTS450 and SLI them, but now they're old.

 

[campdude]

The preformance of this video card could have been boughten 3 years ago.
If you dont mind spending 300 dollars.

 

[spentshells]

***NO***


This is incorrect.


Read the test setup and benchmarks section.
An overclocked card was underclocked to reference specifications to get the 550 Ti results.


The difference the factory overclock makes is highlighted on the overclocked page results.

Reread and you are correct forgive me as I will +++NOT+++ be making that mistake again.

 

[spentshells]

M.E.H

agreed.. this card is exactly that.

 

[matthewpesonen]

For a Folding benchmark (kind of i guess) with my Galaxy GTX 550ti 2gb and Phenom 9850 x4:
MilkyWay@Home (cuda_opencl)(0.05 CPUs + 1.0 GPU) 49481 GFLOPs Size. Speed was 35.84 GFLOPs. Took 19:03 minutes.
SETI@Home (cuda_fermi)(0.69 CPUs + 1.0 GPU) 158350 GFLOPs Size. Speed was 207.73 GFLOPS. Took 15:00 minutes.

 

[rc_bdo]

=hardcore_gamer 03/15/2011 3:36 PM Hide -7+
The far superior, less power consuming 6850 is available for only $10 more..This card is pointless=

Sure its pointless for ATI user, since ATI user only think about texelation. While NVDIA think, no matter how many texel you can achive with one card, it wont do anygood with the game which does not support it. As long as ATI dont pay those game developers with big bucks for their games, they wouldnt have the logo like NVIDA on the begining of their games which means, even the crappiest NVIDIA card like GT 220 can play the game oreety well unlike some expensive ATI cards.

 

[silverblue]

I'm not sure what you're getting at. TWIMTBP isn't a guarantee of good performance on an NVIDIA card, neither is any title promoted by AMD solely going to perform well on AMD cards.

Southern Islands looks to be a big change in terms of AMD's approach to graphics processing, at least in terms of the upper models (the lower ones are VLIW4), perhaps AMD's proper answer to Fermi and its obvious advantages in areas such as tesselation (an area that ATi was very much interested in).