ASUS GTX 550 Ti DirectCU TOP
Published by Christian Ney on 05.07.11Page:
Conclusion
| General | + | - | |
| Technically the nVidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti is the successor of the GTS 450. It aims at gamers who tend to play using 17'' - 22'' screens with filters on and high quality textures. In our opinion the price for this card is too high: the best price/performance ratio in this market segment goes either to the HD 5770 or the GTX 460. Regarding the ASUS version of the GTX 550 Ti, the factory overclocking really makes a difference over the reference design. Furthermore the card comes with a custom PCB and an efficient DirectCU cooler. And the best thing is you'll get all these features for only CHF 10.- more compared to the reference model. | - Efficient cooling system - 2D/3D silent - Factory Overclocking - Price compared to the reference GTX 550 Ti | - Price over Radeon HD 5770 / GTX 460 | |
| Performance | + | - | |
| The performance of the GTX 550 Ti isn't bad. The card perfoms better than for exemple the GTX 275 which used to be 50 percent more expensive when it's been released. But with the HD 5770 and GTX 460 available in the same market segment for a lower price and with more performance, this card will face very tough competition. Meanwhile the ENGTX550 DirectCU TOP which is factory overclocked performs quite a bit better than the reference GTX 550 Ti but it's still not enough to be interesting from price/performance point of view. | . | - Performance over 2 years old cards that were 50 % more expensive | - Performance over the HD 5770 / GTX 460 |
| Overclocking | + | - | |
| Using the the bundled software ASUS SmartDoctor, which is able to manipulate voltages via a chip on the PCB it was possible to reach a GPU frequency above 1 GHz. Of course the dual slot DirectCU cooler had an impact on the overclocking. In the end we were able to drive the GPU at 1.1 GHz which really is an impressively high frequency and we wonder how at which clock speeds this card would run using extreme cooling methods. Concerning the memory we managed to run it 374 MHz above the stock frequency. |
- 1'100 MHz GPU / 1'400 MHz Memory
- 14 % faster |
||
| Recommendation | + | - | |
| If you should be looking for a very good custom mid-range graphics card that comes with a unique board layout, factory overclocking and reasonable performance figures then the ASUS GTX 550 TI DirectCU Top will be a perfect match for you. But as we've already mentioned the GTX 550 Ti in general faces very tough competition when compared with a GTX 460 or HD 5770. | - Gamers | ||
| The ASUS GTX 550 Ti DirectCU Top can be bought at Digitec for CHF 166.- (est. EUR 128.-) | |||
Author: Christian Ney c.ney@ocaholic.ch
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