EVGA’s GTX 550 Ti “free performance” evaluation
Wolfenstein
Wolfenstein is a science fiction first-person shooter video game mostly co-developed by Raven and id Software and published by Activision. It is the sequel to Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and uses the id Tech 4 engine. The game was released in 2009. 
Our timedemo benchmark was created by ABT’s own Senior Editor and lead reviewer, BFG10K. It is very accurate and totally repeatable.
First we test at 2560×1600 with completely maxed out in-game settings.
This resolution is too demanding for our GTX 550 Ti although it beats up on the GTS 450 which produces a slideshow at the same settings. Now we test at 1920×1200 with maxed-out settings.
This time it looks like driver issues are to blame for AMDs broken performance in this OpenGL game with the HD 5770. There are no such issues with Catalyst 11-2 and the 6000 series has no issues with this beta 11-4 driver. Fortunately the Wolfenstein game is not so demanding at 1920×1200 that the GTX 550 Ti’s results are sufficient to get by. We also note good improvement in framerates by increasing the core’s clockspeed.
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.