Introduction

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NVIDIA's GeForce 500 Juggernaut is sinking deep into the market's key business area, the mainstream, where most money is made, with the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, reviewed today. The GeForce GTX 560 Ti launched last month rattled the "gamer's sweet spot" ($200~$250) price-range, and it's now up to the GTX 550 Ti to capture the sub-$200 market as the best option available. A huge task, in a market almost saturated with options. The $5 you paid to the toll-booth on your way to the PC hardware store could determine what graphics card you end up buying!

NVIDIA GeForce 550 Ti is technically a successor to the GeForce GTS 450. Its purpose is to provide gamers with a graphics card that lets them game at 1680x1050 or 1600x900, that 17-22-inch monitor that they never bothered to change, with a lot of eye-candy turned on. Then when they decide to go big with 1920x1200 or 1920x1080, adding a second GTX 550 Ti in SLI should give them high-end performance that lets them play anything at HD resolutions.

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To accomplish this task, the GTX 550 Ti is based on the new 40 nm GF116 silicon, which packs 192 CUDA cores, and a 192-bit GDDR5 memory interface. 1 GB is the standard memory amount, and is spread across the 192-bit bus using memory chips of variable densities. A smart design move to achieve as much as 70% higher memory bandwidth than GTS 450 with its 128-bit interface.

The ASUS GTX 550 Ti Direct CU TOP comes with a proven heatsink design that has been used on many other NVIDIA and AMD products by the company. Clock speeds are improved as well out of the box but are not the highest we have seen today. Pricing compared to the NVIDIA reference design is reasonably increased, just $10 more.

<table border="1" class="resulttable" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3">
<tr>
<th></th>
<td>GeForce 
GTS 450</td>
<td>Radeon 
HD 5770</td>
<td>GeForce 
GTX 550 Ti</td>
<td>ASUS GTX 
550 Ti DC TOP</td>
<td>GeForce 
GTX 460</td>
<td>GeForce 
GTX 460</td>
<td>Radeon 
HD 6850</td>
<td>Radeon 
HD 5850</td>
<td>GeForce 
GTX 470</td>
<td>Radeon 
HD 6870</td>
<td>GeForce 
GTX 560 Ti</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Shader units </th>
<td align="right">192</td>
<td align="right">800</td>
<td align="right">192</td>
<td align="right">192</td>
<td align="right">336</td>
<td align="right">336</td>
<td align="right">960</td>
<td align="right">1440</td>
<td align="right">448</td>
<td align="right">1120</td>
<td align="right">384</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>ROPs</th>
<td align="right">16</td>
<td align="right">16</td>
<td align="right">24</td>
<td align="right">24</td>
<td align="right">24</td>
<td align="right">32</td>
<td align="right">32</td>
<td align="right">32</td>
<td align="right">40</td>
<td align="right">32</td>
<td align="right">32</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>GPU</th>
<td align="right">GF106</td>
<td align="right">Juniper</td>
<td align="right">GF116</td>
<td align="right">GF116</td>
<td align="right">GF104</td>
<td align="right">GF104</td>
<td align="right">Barts</td>
<td align="right">Cypress</td>
<td align="right">GF100</td>
<td align="right">Barts</td>
<td align="right">GF114</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Transistors</th>
<td align="right">1170M</td>
<td align="right">1040M</td>
<td align="right">1170M</td>
<td align="right">1170M</td>
<td align="right">1950M</td>
<td align="right">1950M</td>
<td align="right">1700M</td>
<td align="right">2154M</td>
<td align="right">3200M</td>
<td align="right">1700M</td>
<td align="right">1950M</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Memory Size</th>
<td align="right">1024 MB</td>
<td align="right">1024 MB </td>
<td align="right">1024 MB</td>
<td align="right">1024 MB</td>
<td align="right">768 MB</td>
<td align="right">1024 MB</td>
<td align="right">1024 MB</td>
<td align="right">1024 MB</td>
<td align="right">1280 MB</td>
<td align="right">1024 MB</td>
<td align="right">1024 MB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Memory Bus Width </th>
<td align="right">128 bit </td>
<td align="right">128 bit </td>
<td align="right">192 bit </td>
<td align="right">192 bit </td>
<td align="right">192 bit </td>
<td align="right">256 bit </td>
<td align="right">256 bit </td>
<td align="right">256 bit </td>
<td align="right">320 bit </td>
<td align="right">256 bit </td>
<td align="right">256 bit </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Core Clock</th>
<td align="right">783 MHz </td>
<td align="right">850 MHz </td>
<td align="right">900 MHz </td>
<td align="right">975 MHz </td>
<td align="right">675 MHz </td>
<td align="right">675 MHz </td>
<td align="right">775 MHz </td>
<td align="right">725 MHz </td>
<td align="right">607 MHz </td>
<td align="right">900 MHz </td>
<td align="right">823 MHz </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Memory Clock</th>
<td align="right">900 MHz </td>
<td align="right">1200 MHz </td>
<td align="right">1026 MHz </td>
<td align="right">1026 MHz </td>
<td align="right">900 MHz </td>
<td align="right">900 MHz </td>
<td align="right">1000 MHz </td>
<td align="right">1000 MHz </td>
<td align="right">837 MHz </td>
<td align="right">1050 MHz </td>
<td align="right">1002 MHz </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Price</th>
<td align="right">$129</td>
<td align="right">$140</td>
<td align="right">$159</td>
<td align="right">$169</td>
<td align="right">$150</td>
<td align="right">$180</td>
<td align="right">$180</td>
<td align="right">$200</td>
<td align="right">$250</td>
<td align="right">$220</td>
<td align="right">$250</td>
</tr>
</table>

Packaging

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You will receive:

Graphics card
Driver CD + Documentation
PCI-Express Power Cable

The Card

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ASUS is using their first generation Direct CU cooler on the card, which we have seen on numerous models from the company before.

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Like all other GTX 550 boards, the GTX 550 requires two slots in your system.

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The card has one DVI port, one full size HDMI port and one analog VGA port. Unlike AMD's latest GPUs, the output logic design is not as flexible. On AMD cards vendors are free to combine six TMDS links into any output configuration they want (dual-link DVI consuming two links), on NVIDIA, you are fixed to two DVI outputs and one HDMI/DP in addition to that. NVIDIA confirmed that you can use only two displays at the same time, so for a three monitor setup you would need two cards.

NVIDIA has included an HDMI sound device inside their GPU which does away with the requirement of connecting an external audio source to the card for HDMI audio. The HDMI interface is HDMI 1.3a compatible which includes Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, AC-3, DTS and up to 7.1 channel audio with 192 kHz / 24-bit. NVIDIA also claims full support for the 3D portion of the HDMI 1.4 specification which will become important later this year when we will see first Blu-Ray titles shipping with support for 3D output.

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You may combine up to two GTX 550 Ti cards of any model from any vendor in SLI.

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Here are the front and the back of the card, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.

A Closer Look

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For optimal heat transfer the cooler on ASUS' GTX 550 Ti Direct CU uses two heatpipes that make direct contact with the GPU surface. Unfortunately ASUS has not addressed a fan motor limitation that requires a certain minimum RPM at all times which results in increased noise.

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The card requires a single 6-pin PCI-Express power connector, which is just enough to handle the card.

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The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Hynix, and carry the model number H5GQ2H24MFR-T2C. There are two densities of memory chips, four 1 Gbit (128 MB), and two 2 Gbit (256 MB), to populate the 192-bit wide memory interface, and achieve 1024 MB of total memory. They are specified to run at 1250 MHz (5000 MHz GDDR5 effective).

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ASUS has rebranded the voltage controller on their card, I think it is a controller similar to the ONSemi chip uses on other designs. It offers voltage control via VID exposed through NVIDIA's driver.

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NVIDIA's GeForce 116 graphics processor is made on a 40 nm process at TSMC Taiwan. It uses the same architecture as NVIDIA's GF 106 but with improvements on the transistor level to reduce power consumption.

Test System

<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System - VGA Rev. 14</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="120" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">Intel Core i7 920 @ 3.8 GHz (Bloomfield, 8192 KB Cache)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">Gigabyte X58 Extreme 
Intel X58 & ICH10R</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">3x 2048 MB Mushkin Redline XP3-12800 DDR3 
@ 1520 MHz 8-7-7-16</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">WD Caviar Black 6401AALS 640 GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">akasa 1200W</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows 7 64-bit</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Drivers:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">GTX 550: 267.59 GTX 560: 266.56 NVIDIA: 266.58 ATI: Catalyst 11.1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Display:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">
LG Flatron W3000H 30" 2560x1600 <img src="http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_550_Ti_Direct_Cu/images/zotac.jpg" width="120" height="40"></td>
</tr>
</table>
Benchmark scores in other reviews are only comparable when this exact same configuration is used.

All video card results were obtained on this exact system with the exact same configuration.
All games were set to their highest quality setting

Each benchmark was tested at the following settings and resolution:

1024 x 768, No Anti-aliasing. This is a standard resolution without demanding display settings.
1280 x 1024, 2x Anti-aliasing. Common resolution for most smaller flatscreens today (17" - 19"). A bit of eye candy turned on in the drivers.
1680 x 1050, 4x Anti-aliasing. Most common widescreen resolution on larger displays (19" - 22"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
1920 x 1200, 4x Anti-aliasing. Typical widescreen resolution for large displays (22" - 26"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
2560 x 1600, 4x Anti-aliasing. Highest possible resolution for commonly available displays (30"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.

Aliens vs. Predator

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Aliens vs. Predator is based on a merger of the Aliens and the Predators franchise: two legendary alien species that are in conflict with each other, fighting to the death with human marines caught in between. The first person shooter game was developed by Rebellion Studios, who also developed the first AVP PC title and released in February 2010. It was one of the first DirectX 11 games with support for new features like Tesselation, which is why AMD heavily promoted it at the time of their DX 11 card launches. We used the AVP benchmark utility with tesselation and advanced DX11 shadows enabled.

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Battlefield: Bad Company 2

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Battlefield: Bad Company 2, released in March 2010 by Electronics Arts, is the most successful DirectX 11 title so far. Even though it contains a full single-player campaign during which the player has to work with a squad to secure a secret weapon, the game is most well known for its fast paced, exciting multiplayer squad action. Thanks to a CPU-based Havok physics engine and skillful use of scripting, the game has destroyable objects, vegetation and terrain without requiring NVIDIA PhysX.
We tested the truck chase scene of the second single-player mission at maximum settings with DirectX 11 enabled.

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BattleForge

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BattleForge, a card based RTS, is developed by the German EA Phenomic Studio. A few months after launch the game was transformed into a Play 4 Free branded game. That move and the fact that it was included as game bundle with a large number of ATI cards made it one of the more well known RTS games of 2009. You as a player assemble your deck before game to select the units that will be available. Your choice can be from forces of Fire, Frost, Nature and Shadow to complement each other.
The BattleForge engine has full support for DX 9, DX 10 and DX 10.1, we used the internal benchmark tool in DirectX 11 mode to acquire our results.

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Call of Duty 4

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Call of Duty 4 is a first-person shooter that is built on the award winning Call of Duty Series. It is the first version to play in modern times. In a near-future conflict between the United States, Europe and Russia you get to play as a United States Marine and a British SAS operative. The engine is Infinity Ward's own creation and has true dynamic lighting, depth of field, dynamic shadows and HDR. Even though the game plot is scripted you will find yourself in intense battles, often working together with computer controlled team mates.

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Call of Juarez 2

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Call of Juarez 2: Bound in Blood is a prequel to the first Call of Juarez game which was one of the first DX10 titles available on the market. This time the plot evolves around two brothers, before each mission you may pick one to play. Your choices affect the game play since both characters have different ways of handling situations and doing combat.
Call of Juarez 2 uses Techland's Chrome Engine 4 which adds Edge Anti Aliasing as one of the first engines on the market. Edge Anti Aliasing looks similar to normal AA but comes with a considerably reduced performance drop. However, due to the deferred shading design of Edge AA, normal AA can't be used on top of it.

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Civilization 5

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Sid Meier's Civilization V (or Civ 5 in common jargon), is the latest addition to the franchise of masterfully-crafted realtime strategy games that let you play God to a nascent civilization of your choice all the way up to the space-age. Civilization V uses large 3D worlds that are procedurally-generated, and takes advantage of hardware tessellation features offered by DirectX 11 to exponentially step up complexity of cities, models, terrains, and objects. It is also expected of this generation of GPUs to handle the larger texture loads that come with the eye-candy.

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Crysis

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After the tremendous success of Far Cry, the German game studio Crytek released their latest shooter Crysis in 2007. The game was by far the most hyped and anticipated game in 2007, the forums were full of "Can my system run Crysis?" threads because of the high hardware requirements of this game. Just like in Far Cry the plot evolves on a small island with a thick and richly detailed jungle world. A lot of attention has been given to small details like correct physics. For example when you fire on a tree trunk, it will shatter and the tree will fall over leaving a stump behind. Enemies in a car can be stopped by shooting the tire of the car. The game graphics are by far the best ever seen in a PC game so far, yet the game still runs well on most computers.

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Formula One 2010

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F1 2010 is an official implementation of the Formula One 2010 season with accurate teams, drivers and cars. One highlight of the game are the extensive realism options and the detailed weather effects. You pick a driver and get to race over several seasons, constantly improving your skill and trying to impress the big teams to score a contract with them to enjoy the faster car to race for the world championship. The game is based on an improved Dirt 2 engine and features the latest in DirectX 11 technology. We used the highest details setting for our testing.

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Far Cry 2

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Four years after the success of Far Cry, Ubisoft has published the sequel called Far Cry 2. While the first part was set on an island, Far Cry 2 takes you deep into Africa with game play that resembles Grand Theft Auto much more than the original Far Cry, which was a classical 3D shooter. Ubisoft engineered a completely new 3D engine called "Dunia" which offers a large amount of popular features like DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 support, destructible environments, physics and non-scripted AI while not being as much of a resource hog as Crytek's CryEngine. We tested the Ranch Medium level at DirectX 10 with highest details.

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Tom Clancy's HAWX

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Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. is one of the very few recent flight simulator games on the market. Being a console conversion it emphasizes "flight" more than "simulator". It is set in a near future in which private military companies have begun fighting conflicts for nations with their own military gear. You are playing an elite pilot who was recruited by such a private company. During the game you get to fly over 50 different aircrafts, ranging from the MIG 21 to the mighty F22 Raptor. One notable feature of its engine is the use of GeoEye satellite imagery for terrain generation which offers one of the most realistic incarnations of battlefield terrain available today.

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Metro 2033

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Metro 2033 is a first-person shooter game that is set in a post apocalyptic Moscow - as the name suggests inside the metro system. You will fight mutants or other humans who like to take away your shelter. The game has many gameplay elements similar to STALKER, also the engine has similar features. This is because two STALKER engine programmers left GSC Game World and started their own company which is now making Metro 2033.
The engine has support for all the latest eye candy like DirectX 11 and Tesselation. Unfortunately it leaves a less than optimized impression, making it a candidate to surpass Crysis for the highest hardware requirements. We tested in DirectX 11 mode with details set to "Very High".

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Unreal Tournament 3

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The fourth game in Epic's highly successful Unreal Tournament Series is simply called Unreal Tournament 3. It is based on the Unreal 3 engine which is a major step forward from the previous engine. The game principle is centered about an arena style gameplay where several contestants try to reach a certain kill count or capture a flag for example. For its time, the graphics were top notch, with large and detailed textures. Unreal Tournament 3 is an important benchmark because its engine has been used in a large number of other titles, and there are even some in development using it. One major drawback of the way the engine is designed is that there is no support for Anti-Aliasing.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

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World of Warcraft is the most successful massively multiplayer online game in the world with far over 12 milion monthly subscribers. The game is centered around the epic battle between the Horde and Alliance factions with many other races getting involved in a long and complex story line. Even though it has been released in 2004, Blizzard has always added incremental improvements to the graphics, especially with new expansions. One key success of World of Warcraft is that it will run on a large number of slower systems, but also delivers a decent graphics experience on high-end systems. We tested in DirectX 11 mode with details set to "Ultra".

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3DMark 11

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3DMark 11 is the very latest from the house of Futuremark, which has given out some of the most comprehensive benchmark applications for PC enthusiasts and gamers. 3DMark 11, as the name might probably suggest, makes use of Microsoft DirectX 11 API, and puts every feature at its disposal to use, creating astonishingly-realistic visuals. In the process, it evaluates DirectX 11 compliant GPUs, and lets gamers know what to expect from games from the near future that make use of the API, in terms of visual realism. The tessellation and depth of field tests are particularly of interest here.

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Unigine Heaven 2.0

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Unigine Heaven was one of the first demos that supported DirectX 11. Heaven is a technology demonstration for Unigine engine which supports DirectX 9 through 11 and OpenGL too. Version 2.0 adds more scenes and optionally more complex tesselation features. While there is some controversy surrounding the benchmark whether it is an accurate representation of what to expect from future games in regards to DirectX 11 we still chose it as test to get an insight into potential future gaming.

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Power Consumption

Cooling modern video cards is becoming more and more difficult, especially when users are asking for quiet cooling solutions. That's why the engineers are now paying much more attention to power consumption of new video card designs.

For this test we measure power consumption of only the graphics card, via PCI-Express power connector(s) and PCI-Express bus slot. A Keithley Integra 2700 with 6.5 digits is used for all measurements. Again, the values here reflect card only power consumption measured at DC VGA card inputs, not the whole system.

We chose 3DMark03 Nature as a standard test representing typical 3D usage because it offers: - very high power draw - high repeatability - is a standard benchmark that is supported by all cards - drivers are actively tested and optimized for it - supports all multi-GPU configurations - easy to obtain - fairly compact in size - test runs a constant duration and renders a non-static scene with variable complexity just like any normal game.

The four result values are as following:

Idle: Windows Vista Aero sitting at the desktop (1280x1024 32-bit) all windows closed, drivers installed. Card left to warm up in idle until power draw is stable.
Average: 3DMark03 Nature at 1280x1024, 6xAA, 16xAF. This results in the highest power consumption. Average of all readings (12 per second) while the test was rendering (no title screen).
Peak: 3DMark03 Nature at 1280x1024, 6xAA, 16xAF. Highest single reading during the test.
Maximum: Furmark Stability Test at 1280x1024, 0xAA. This results in a very high non-game power consumption that can typically be reached only with stress testing applications. Card left running stress test until power draw converged to a stable value.
Blu-ray Playback: Power DVD 9 Ultra is used at a resolution of 1920x1200 to play back the Batman: The Dark Knight disc with GPU acceleration turned on. Playback starts around timecode 1:19 which has the highest data rates on the BD with up to 40 Mb/s. Playback left running until power draw converged to a stable value.

Power consumption in all scenarios is decent, roughly comparable to GTX 460, which does offer more performance though. What I am happy to see is that unlike on AMD's latest cards Blu-ray power consumption is very low.

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Fan Noise

In the past years users would accept everything just to get more performance. Nowadays this has changed with people being more aware of the fan noise and power consumption of their graphic cards.
In order to properly test the fan noise a card emits we are using a Bruel & Kjaer 2236 sound level meter (~$4,000) which has the measurement range and accuracy we are looking for.

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The tested graphics card is installed in a system that is completely passively cooled. That is passive PSU, passive CPU cooler, passive cooling on the motherboard and Solid-State HDD.
This setup allows us to eliminate secondary noise sources and test only the video card. To be more compliant with standards like DIN 45635 (we are not claiming to be fully DIN 45635 certified) the measurement is conducted at 100 cm distance and 160 cm over the floor. The ambient background noise level in the room is well below 20 dbA for all measurements. Please note that the dbA scale is not linear, it is logarithmic. 40 dbA is not twice as loud as 20 dbA. A 3 dbA increase results in double the sound pressure. The human hearing is a bit different and it is generally accepted that a 10 dbA increase doubles the perceived sound level. The 3D load noise levels are tested with a stressful game, not Furmark.

Idle fan noise of teh GTX 550 Direct CU is higher than on other GTX 550 cards we tested today. The reason is that the fan motor requires a minimum RPM speed, no matter what the card requests it to run at. Due to this limitation there is no change in actual fan speed, even though the card is programmed to do so. Under load fan noise is good, out of the four cards tested today, only the Palit GTX 550 Ti Sonic is quieter.

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Performance Summary

To create this graph we took all performance results of the five resolutions we tested, threw them together and calculated the relative performance of each card, compared to our review sample. In a sixth graph we also combined all tests in all resolutions to calculate the total relative performance of the review sample. Cards that do not support DX11 were given a score according to their performance in all other non-DX11 tests, which means cards were not penalized for not having DirectX 11 support.

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Performance per Watt

This graph was created by taking the relative performance numbers and putting them in contrast to the average power consumption results.

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Performance per Dollar

If you are looking for the best bang for the buck, then you will love this graph. We looked up the current USD price of each card on the popular online shop Newegg and used it and the relative performance numbers to calculate the Performance per Dollar Index.

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Overclocking

To find the maximum overclock of our card we used a combination of GPUTool and our benchmarking suite.
The overclocks listed in this section were achieved with the default fan and voltage settings as defined in the VGA BIOS. Please note that every single sample overclocks differently, that's why our results here can only serve as a guideline for what you can expect from your card.

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On our sample we could reach a maximum stable clock speed of 1065 MHz core (9% overclock) and 1207 MHz Memory (18% overclock).
The memory overclock sits in the middle of the spectrum that we have seen from the other GTX 550 Ti cards tested today. GPU overclock is excellent with 1065 MHz.

Overclocked Performance

Using these clock frequencies we ran a quick test of Call of Duty 4 to evaluate the gains from overclocking.

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The actual 3D performance gained from overclocking is 10.1%.

Temperatures

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Temperatures of the card are very comfortable and can easily stand some additional overclocking.

Voltage Tuning

It has been a long known fact that overclocking headroom increases as soon as you increase the operating voltage. Until recently, software voltage control on VGA cards has been the exception and most users were not willing to risk their warranty by performing a soldering voltmod. Nowadays almost all current graphics cards have voltage control in order to achieve low power consumption by lowering voltage when in idle or slightly loaded.
In this section we will increase the GPU operating voltage step by step and record the maximum clock speed possible. Voltage is listed as the value that the voltage regulator reports via software, not actual measured voltage. The card was installed in-case, with fan settings at the default, memory will not be overclocked either. If a card has thermal throttling we will reduce the operating frequency to keep performance at maximum for a given voltage. Please note that the fan profile will have an effect on observed temperatures: if the card gets hotter the fan will ramp up to reduce temperatures or keep them from rising fast.

The following graph shows the overclocking potential we saw on our sample. GPU clock is represented by the blue line, which uses the vertical clock scale on the left. The scale starts at the default clock to give a feel for the overclocking potential over the base clock. Temperature is plotted in red using the °C scale on the right side of the graph. An additional graph shows the full system power draw in orange measured at the wall socket when running at the given voltage, clock & temperature.

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The range to adjust voltage is fairly limited, it is also a bit surprising to see no clock increase with more voltage.

Clock Profiles

Modern graphics cards have several clock profiles that are selected to balance power draw and performance requirements.
The following table lists the clock settings for major performance scenarios and the GPU voltage that we measured. We measure on the pins of a coil or capacitor near the GPU voltage regulator.

<table border="1" class="resulttable" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3">
<tr>
<th></th>
<td>Core 
Clock</td>
<td>Memory 
Clock</td>
<td>GPU Voltage 
(measured)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Desktop</th>
<td align="right">51 MHz</td>
<td align="right">68 MHz</td>
<td align="right">1.01 V</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Blu-ray Playback</th>
<td align="right">405 MHz</td>
<td align="right">162 MHz</td>
<td align="right">1.00 V</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>3D Load</th>
<td align="right">975 MHz</td>
<td align="right">1026 MHz</td>
<td align="right">1.13 V</td>
</tr>
</table>

Value and Conclusion

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<tr><th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/dollar.gif</th>
<td>

According to ASUS their GeForce GTX 550 Ti Direct CU TOP will retail at around $170.

</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbup.gif</th>
<td>

Overclocked out of the box
Quiet cooler under load
Good overclocking potential
Full size HDMI connector
Mixed density memory chips help increase performance
Support for DirectX 11
Support for CUDA / PhysX

</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbdown.gif</th>
<td>

Noisy in idle
Still limited to two active display outputs per card
No triple or quad SLI option
DirectX 11 relevance limited at this time

</td></tr>
<tr><th>8.8</th>
<td>NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti adds yet another item to the overcrowded mainstream plate, in the GPU buffet. At the outset, any addition is a good one for the buyer, as it increases consumer choice and tends to affect pricing of other products in the segment, but then it also adds to the confusion. You may have all the world's review data on the back of your mind, but when you stare at a rack of pretty-looking graphics card boxes, all in the same price-range, it becomes a mind-numbing and almost traumatic experience to pick the right card, and often things as trivial as box design affect your choice. 
GTX 550 Ti is a good performer for screens sized 22-inch and below, that use sub-HD resolutions. 1680x1050, 1440x900, and 1600x900 are popular gaming resolutions in this category. The GTX 550 Ti is a fair bit faster than its predecessor, the GeForce GTS 450. It makes games such as Crysis, that were close to unplayable at 1680x1050 with GTS 450, playable, with over 25 FPS. On the other hand, it's still slower than the previous generation GeForce GTX 460 768MB, which is not only faster at 1680x1050, but also $20 cheaper, making for an overall better option...while stock lasts. 
While NVIDIA perfected its Fermi architecture with the GeForce 500 Series allowing for higher clock speeds, it is also coming at higher power draw for the GTX 550 Ti. The card draws more power on load than a GTX 460 768 MB, the performance per Watt figure took a bigger beating as a result. Overall, GeForce GTX 550 Ti is a fairly good choice, if you can keep track of every other option in this card's proximity. Look out for the cheaper, faster GTX 460 768 MB without prejudice toward its 25% lesser memory amount, also look out for Radeon HD 6850 from the red camp, which is just about $10 costlier, but significantly faster. 1680x1050 is the ideal resolution, if full HD gaming is something you require for the near future, you're better off buying a $250 graphics card now than two of these at different points in time. NVIDIA partners are selling GTX 550 Ti with overclocked speeds at almost no price premium. It makes for a good bargain, but even with overclocked speeds, things don't change much for the GTX 550 Ti in its competitive neighbourhood. A smarter move would have been a 140$ card that can win in its segment. 
The ASUS GeForce GTX 550 Ti Direct CU builds upon the success of ASUS' Direct CU cooling concept in which the heapipes make direct contact with the GPU surface. This cooling approach works well. The card offers excellent overclocking headroom and safe temperatures, even with voltage tweaking. The only drawback is the well pronounced fan noise in idle. Another plus of the card is that it comes with a full size HDMI connector instead of the mini-HDMI output that we see on other cards.</td></tr>
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</table>