EVGA’s GTX 550 Ti “free performance” evaluation
Overclocking, noise and power usage
We easily overclocked our GTX 550 Ti to 960MHz on the core. Unfortunately, our ambient temperatures rose into the 80sF as an unusual early Spring heat wave hit our local high-desert testing lab and we backed down the overclock to 940MHz where it proved to be rock solid. Playing with the memory clocks were a bit more tricky as we could get higher clocks than we settled on, but the performance results were not consistent so we settled on a little bump to 2200MHz (from 2178MHz).
Noise
The EVGA GTX 550 Ti is slightly quieter in comparison to the Radeon HD 5770 which is already a very quiet card. You are never aware of either card during gaming even when they spin up under load – even if you are listening for their fan’s noise.
This section is also unfinished. We plan to add relative noise comparison to this review as well as power draw numbers. Basically, the numbers are very close overall and are in the same class in power draw and thermals. Both cards have great appeal to the enthusiast who wants a decent entry-level video card.
I am just getting around to it but i must say very nice review apoppins! As always your vast selection of games and benchmarks is top notch. Its so complete. I know you used it a lot, but I wouldve liked to have seen 1680 x 1050 results for every game. You may have only skipped it when the 550ti was doing very well at 1920×1200 and thats fine. But i feel like 1680×1050 is intended for this card and although at times it can obviously do well at higher resolutions, the 1680×1050 should be the starting point in all the test.
Dont get me wrong, your review was great. I just think cards intended for a certain resolution often get reviewed in much higher resolutions which doesnt do them much justice. Your review does do the 550ti justice though, its very full and useful.
Thank-you!
Again, the reason for leaving 1680×1050 out came down to time. Or a lack of it.
I did try to compensate by finding settings that approached playability and I hope we can revisit the GTX 550 Ti in another article. I did some further testing of the GTX 550 Ti in the HD 6670/6570 launch article, in fact.
Galaxy is sponsoring our May contest – the prizes will include a GTX 550 Ti and a GTX 560 Ti.