Reviews - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 550 Ti graphics card review

[HEXUS]

NVIDIA brings second-generation Fermi to the masses.

Read more.

[Rob_B]

£130 'mighty close' to 460 territory? It's smack bang in 1GB 460 territory never mind the 768mb 460s which whip it's arse (excluding the 0.1fps win in Starcraft...) and can be had for £115ish

Its a little more power hungry than the 460 768mb apart from 1 game @ load, although cooler (due ot the non-stock HSF of course)

Rather than spending 'a few extra quid' for a 1GB 460 you could SAVE £15 & buy a 768mb 460 & still get better performance, even at £110 it would be a tough decision to buy the 550Ti.

I realise why it has been produced but it's not a good option surely unless it hits a ~ £100 price mark?

[Domestic_Ginger]

Any chance of a comparison of the 450 and 550 running at the same clocks in one or two benchies? I wasn't aware of the memory controller partition upgrade.

I do like the 10cm fan though; hopefully we'll see more them.

[EzyRyder]

So basically a 5% faster than a 5770 and how much more expensive?!?!?!

Its at 6850 prices!!! LOL at nVidia.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Supposedly according to Bit-tech(I know!) the lower end cards are meant to be around £90 to £100 when they talked to some retailers. At £90 to £100 the GTX550TI would actually not a bad card however above this it is not really that great a choice IMHO.

[krazy_olie]

without getting nit picky... what does "almost nine per cent cooler than NVIDIA's reference design" mean?

[tickedon]

Good card, bad pricing. Seems to be a standard refrain these days...

Even with Scan pricing at £113-£150 for this card, I'm thinking a 5770 (£101), 460 (£120/130) or 6850 (£135) all seem better bets. I just can't see where the 550 fits in - every price seems to be covered by a better card. I think it really needs to fall a bit and hit the £100 mark, hopefully after launch that's what will happen.

At least there's choice though?

[CK_1985]

For me, this card is a big disappointment. To be slower than a cheaper previous generation card and not bring anything new to the table is hopeless. Am I right in thinking it also means that nVidia has no current-gen card between £110 and £200 (excluding OC'ed cards)? That just seems wrong to me...

[Domestic_Ginger]

560 is £190.

I personally don't think of the 400s being a generation behind the 500s. They still are reliant on the 460s to fill up the higher low end.

[danroyle]

seems like a silly price 460's FTW i think

[joelrod]

Thank´s for this review.

The SM approach was what I was looking
for. Saw other website´s reviews lacking this insight.

Some times more SM´s are better.

[Tarinder]

Any chance of a comparison of the 450 and 550 running at the same clocks in one or two benchies? I wasn't aware of the memory controller partition upgrade.

I do like the 10cm fan though; hopefully we'll see more them.

Got something for you - http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=29624

[nerrawg]

Not a bad review but I thought the bang for buck stats are somewhat skewed. The 5770 can be found @ ~£100 while it performs similar to the 550 TI @ stock clocks. This can be seen if you read reviews at xbit labs, toms hardware and anandtech. However if you look specifically and the ingenious bang4buck stats that they do here at Hexus (a lovely feature I must add), it would appear that the 550 TI is significantly better value @ 1.95 than the AMD 5770 which finds itself @ 1.77!

So how can this be!? A card that costs £30 and has been reviewed by most sites to be comparable performance wise to a 5770 is somehow better value? When looking more closely it is apparent that it has to do with both the games chosen and the resolutions. If you had tested some more graphic intensive games like Dirt 2, Crysis Warhead, Far Cry 2, Stalker Call of Priparyat and Battlefield BC2 you would observe that in these games where FPS is an issue the cards are neck and neck. Instead games like Call of duty, F1 2010 and Just Cause 2 are less significant as they can be played with full eye candy on both of these cards. So in the real world the 5770 should be considerably more bang4buck if there is a £30 spread between these cards.

Obviously you are free to disagree, but I think you will find if you look at other reviews that the bang4buck stats given in this review give the opposite representation of the real world value. Anyways I agree with the conclusion in this article, the GTX 460 and the AMD 6850 are much better choices regardless.

Best Regards