EVGA’s GTX 550 Ti “free performance” evaluation

Last September, Nvidia introduced the first Sniper, the GeForce GTS 450. To describe the capabilities of the GTS 450 when talking with gamers, Nvidia drew an analogy between a Sniper class unit from an RTS/RPG game.  The Tank refers particularly to Nvidia’s flagship video cards (GTX 570/580/590) which are equipped to handle any gaming situation at high resolution and with maximum details and with maximum filtering and anti-aliasing applied. The Hunter (GTX 560 Ti) is equipped especially for 1920×1200 gaming. And now we re-introduce the new refined, Sniper – rebuilt in the same way as the Tank and the Hunter – as the EVGA GTX 550 Ti and especially suited for 1680×1050 gaming.

Just over two weeks ago, Nvidia introduced a new GeForce Sniper for gamers that’s even more powerful, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti! Yes, Ti stands for Titanium and it brings back fond memories of the old GeForce Ti series which offered excellent bang for buck back then. We also note that the “S” designation in the GTS 450 has been replaced by an “X” as in GTX 550 Ti; the Sniper joins the Hunter and the Tank all as GTXes – gaming GPUs primarily.   Here is EVGA’s new overclocked GTX 560 Ti which etails for the suggested price of $149.99 but can be found now a couple of weeks after launch for $129 after rebate in the United States (with Mafia 2 !!).

This is EVGA’s recently launched newly reconfigured “Sniper”, the new GTX 550 Ti.  It is the new GPU with much higher performance than the GTS 450 but it is clearly not set to replace the GTX 460 which will continue to be made and sold. This new Sniper has a suggested etail price of $150 which is in-line with the GTS 450 pricing at its launch and it is also built for 1680×1050 gaming. Ti is going to take direct aim at especially the HD 5770 as well as the HD 6850 which are etail-priced around $129 and $149 respectively; especially after mail-in-rebates for the HD 6850.

In our original review of the GTS 450 last September, we saw it go toe-to-toe with the HD 5750 although its performance fell short of the HD 5770’s.  Nvidia filled their product line-up’s “hole” with discounted versions of the GTx 460 and especially the 768MB version although it is a more expensive card to produce than the GTS 450.  Nvidia’s strategy worked and the discounted GTX 460s put pressure on AMD and gained some marketshare at a cost.  So Nvidia’s logical choice is to bring in a cheaper to produce GTS 450 replacement that can meet or beat the HD 5770 in the same approximate $150 ($129-$169) range.

And now we are looking forward to the nearly 30 percent improvement with the new GTX 560 Ti that Nvidia promises over the original Sniper, the GTS 450 – all for the same price as when the 450 originally launched!  Logically we will compare it to the HD 5770 which is its main target.

The reference version of the GTX 550 Ti is shown above and its core is clocked at 901MHz. For the same suggested etail price of $150, we see the EVGA GTX 550 Ti is overclocked to 951MHz – free performance for the same price as the reference version!  Of course we shall test the EVGA clocks versus the reference clocks and versus the ultimate clocks we can achieve with the stock fan profile and voltage to see how performance in games scales with increasing clock speed.

Nvidia released its long awaited GeForce GTX based on its brand new Fermi DX11 GF100 architecture back in April of last year, six months later than AMD’s own DX11 Cypress video cards. This new Fermi GPU – Graphics Processing Unit – a term originally originated by Nvidia is a continuation of their strategy since their G80 which launched over three year ago to create a General Purpose Processor – co-equal with the CPU – that also renders amazing graphics. The culmination of Nvidia’s efforts with their GF100 DX11 Fermi architecture was the GTX 480 with the caveat that it runs rather hot and the cooling solutions based on the reference design are rather noisy.

Things changed very rapidly as Nvidia’s introduced a new refined GTX 400 series ‘Tank’, the Galaxy GTX 480 SuperOverclock on a mature process which we covered in this review. Shortly thereafter, enter the completely redesigned Nvidia Tank – at $499 suggested etail pricing and designed to be faster and more efficient than even the super-overclocked GTX 480s.

We saw AMD introduce their new line up, HD 68×0 series to replace HD 58×0 series in our review here. We found out that the “Barts” GPU it is based on is only a mid-range launch so far with the HD 6870 only slightly faster than the HD 5850; the best part is that it replaces it for less money. And about five weeks ago we saw AMD’s Cayman release in the form of HD 6970 and HD 6950. Nvidia took aim at the HD 6970 with the GTX 570, and most recently the GTX 560 Ti took on the HD 6870 and the HD 6950 and today we see the GTX 550 TI aiming at the HD 5770 and HD 6850 – AMD’s bread and butter.

You might also want to take a look at the original Fermi GF100 GTX 480 and quickly recap its new DX11 architecture and features of the original Fermi GF100 which we covered in our reviews of the GTX 480, published here, here and here. Senior Editor BFG10K reviewed GTX 470 here and here and Senior editor MrK covered GTX 465 here.

We also recently examined the performance of Galaxy’s GTX 480 SuperOverclock and we also reran GTX 480 against stock and overclocked versions of HD 5870, HD 6870 and HD 6850 here just a few weeks ago. A recent review covered the GTX 580 a few months ago. We also covered GTX 570 and the launch of the HD 69×0 series against GTX 460. And Senior Editor Leon Hyman covered GTX 460-768M vs. HD 5830 here. GTX 560 Ti’ s launch was covered here. Now you are up to date.

Specifications

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti was designed from the ground up to deliver exceptional tessellation performance, which is a key component of Microsoft’s DirectX 11 development platform for PC games. Tessellation allows game developers to take advantage of the GeForce GTX 550 GPU’s tessellation ability to increase the geometric complexity of models and characters to deliver far more realistic and visually rich gaming environments.

You will soon see that although the clocks of Nvidia’s GTX 550 Ti are clocked higher than the reference GTS 450 version, Nvidia kept their headroom for the new GPU! Because of that, EVGA was able to go much further than the reference core clock that Nvidia set for the GTX 550 Ti, while still remaining cool and quiet. Here is the specification chart for the GTX 550 Ti at a glance. Right away we notice the GTS 450’s clock is way up and now the new GPU supports the new HDMI 1.4a connector standard.

Now lets compare with the EVGA card

Needless to say, the new Fermi GF116 GTX 550 Ti brings a lot of features to the table that current Nvidia customers will appreciate, including improved CUDA’s PhysX,  Surround to drive up to 3 LCDs with GTX SLI, 3D Vision, superb tessellation capabilities and a really fast GPU in comparison to their GT200 series and even their hot running GF100 series variants like GTX 465 and GTX 470 .

The GTX 550 Ti has improved performance on a clock-per-clock basis that increase efficiency in many cases over the GTS 450. Besides that, Nvidia has increased the clock frequencies and the SMs are all operating more efficiently. We can expect that the GTX 550 Ti will be about 28% faster than the GTS 450 which launched for the same $150.

We also see the GTX 550 TI launch with 1GB of vRAM instead of the expected 768MB due to being engineered to use mixed density GDDR5 memory for the first time.  This is actually a big deal although 1GB of vRAM is not likely to be really useful over 768MB in this class of card.  Perhaps it would be more useful when the GTX 550 Ti is in SLI with a second one and they are dealing with a higher resolution than 1680×1050 – the resolution for which this card was designed.

Beauty is more than skin deep

The GTS 450 was completely re-engineered at the transistor level into the GF116 GTX 550 Ti. Through a complete Fermi redesign on a mature process on TSMC’s 40 nm, the GTX 550 GPU achieves higher clockspeed than the GTS 450 with significantly more performance per watt and with fewer transistors. Only one 6-pin PCIe connector which may be supplied by molex adapters is required.

Should you SLI your GTX 560 Ti?

SLI is supported by GTX 550 Ti and there is improved scaling. There are also recently more compelling reasons besides increased performance to consider GTX 550 Ti SLI which includes being able to experience Nvidia’s multi-display 2D/3D Surround. It is an advantage to keep open the options of adding a second GTX 550 later on.  GTX 550 Ti is primarily designed to handle the most popular widescreen resolution of 1680×1050.  Later on the end user may choose to add a second inexpensive GTX 550 Ti in the future if he upgrades his display to 1920×1080, or games become more demanding.

New Power Monitoring Hardware – or no more Furmark!

Nvidia has added a power draw limitation system to their card beginning with the GTX 580 and also with the GTX 570 and GTX 560 Ti. When either Furmark or OCCT are detected, sensors measure the incoming current and voltage to calculate the total power draw. If the power draw exceeds a certain predetermined limit, the GTX 550 Ti will automatically downclock to avoid damage to hardware components. After the power draw drops back to safe limits, the GPU returns to normal clocks much the same as with thermal management.

Because of this, we will no longer use Furmark for showing power draw and will return to using games to illustrate real world situations. Currently, this power management only switches on when Furmark or OCCT are detected and it should not limit overclocking unless Nvidia extends this management to regular PC games. Evidently this works by having the GeForce driver detect the program and treat it as a virus. In the case of the GTX 580 and the GTX 570, this power limiting circuitry implementation is mandatory by Nvidia’s parners. Like the case of the GTX 560 Ti, Nvidia allowed their partners to choose to include it – or not – with the GTX 550 Ti.

The EVGA GTX 550 Ti

The EVGA GTX 560 Ti come in a no-frills box which means there is little packing to recycle or toss.  Besides your new GTX 550 Ti, you get the driver CD, the user and quick-start guides, a VGA to DVI adapter and a PCIe to molex adapter (not shown) plus a EVGA sticker.

Of course EVGA also sells their video cards at retail and there is plenty of information right on the box.

Let’s look at what EVGA offers us over the reference and other partner versions with their GTX 550-Ti:

· Free version of 3DMark 11 Advanced Edition included. Users can redeem their code when the product is registered on EVGA.com. This is a $19.99 value. For more information, please visit http://www.evga.com/articles/00594/

· Overclocked out of the box – This card offers a +50MHz core speed increase out of the box along with a memory boost.

· Special Edition EVGA Precision – EVGA created a special look of their software specifically for the EVGA GTX 550 Ti. This utility allows overclocking, monitoring and fanspeed adjustments. It is located on the DVD that ships with the card. For more information, please visit www.evga.com/precision/

· EVGA OC Scanner – EVGA OC Scanner is fully supported by the EVGA GTX 550 Ti. This utility allows you to benchmark, monitor and stress test your EVGA card. For more information, please visit www.evga.com/ocscanner/

· Voltage Tuning with EVGA ELEET – EVGA ELEET allows voltage tuning on a wide range of EVGA cards, including the GTX 550 Ti. For more information, please visit www.evga.com/eleet/

· EVGA Customer Support – EVGA’s acclaimed customer support can be contacted by support ticket, email, and phone. For more information, please visit http://www.evga.com/support/

· EVGA Community – Active game servers, thriving forums, integrated chat and social networks allow users to ask questions or get help wherever they feel the most comfortable. For more information, please visit www.evga.com/community/

· EVGA Warranty – EVGA offers a variety of warranties to fit your needs, including our exclusive 10 year Extended Warranty. For more information, please visit www.evga.com/warranty/

· EVGA Advanced RMA Program – EVGA offers this service to help reduce the downtime of a customer’s system by shipping a replacement product first and lets our valued customer deal with the EVGA directly for quick and efficient service. For more information, please visit www.evga.com/ear/

The EVGA GTX 550 Ti is factory overclocked with a Dual BIOS which can be a card-saver if a flash goes bad. EVGA included their Precision overclocking software on the driver DVD or as a download on their site; you can even raise the voltage. This is a tool that we have often used with great results. With a great warranty and advanced RMA’s optional, EVGA offers great service!

The EVGA warranty is superb. Notice that you have 3 years that can be extended by registering,

Here are some of the cards we are testing.  In the foreground is the EVGA GTX 550 Ti and next to it is the card it it taking direct aim at – the HD 5770.  We see the card above it, the GTX 460, then the HD 6870, the GTS 450, the HD 6950 and the GTX 570.

Everything looks great and we will head for benching our EVGA GTX 550 Ti.  Before we do, check the next page and the test configuration.

Test Configuration

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i7 920-reference 2.66 GHz and overclocked to 3.8 GHz; 21x multiplier for 3.97 GHz, Turbo is on.
• Gigabyte EX58-UD3R (Intel X58 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 2.0 specification; CrossFire/SLI 16x+16x).
• 6 GB OCZ DDR3 PC1800 Kingston RAM (3×2 GB, tri-channel at PC1600 speeds; 2×2 GB supplied by Kingston)
• GeForce GTS 450
• EVGA GeForce GTX 550 Ti; 1GB, at EVGA (951/2178MHz), reference (901/2180MHz) and overclocked (1030/2200MHz) clocks
• GeForce GTX 560 Ti, 1.0 GB reference design and clocks (833/2004 MHz), supplied by Galaxy/Nvidia
• GeForce GTX 570, 1.2 GB reference design and clocks (732/1900 MHz), supplied by Nvidia.
• ATI Radeon HD 6950 (2GB 800/1250 MHz) supplied by AMD
• ATi Radeon HD 6870 (1GB, reference clocks, 900/1050 MHz) supplied by AMD
• Diamond Radeon HD 5870 (1GB reference clocks)
• ATI Radeon HD 5770 (1GB, reference clocks 850/1200MHz), on loan by a friend
• Onboard Realtek Audio
• Two identical 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 hard drives configured and set up identically from drive image; one partition for Nvidia GeForce drivers and one for ATI Catalyst drivers
• Thermaltake ToughPower 775 W power supply unit supplied by Thermaltake
• Thermaltake Element G Case supplied by Thermaltake
• Noctua NH-U12P SE2 CPU cooler, supplied by Noctua
• Philips DVD SATA writer
• HP LP3065 2560×1600 thirty inch LCD; ASUS VG236 120Hz 1920×1080 twenty-three inch LCD with 3D Vision kit supplied by Nvidia/ASUS for 3D Vision evaluation.

Test Configuration – Software

• ATi Catalyst 11.2 WHQL driver for all Radeons except for HD 5770 (11-4 beta); highest quality mip-mapping set in the driver; surface performance optimizations are off; “use applications settings” are checked
• NVIDIA GeForce release candidate 267.59 for GTX 550 Ti; WHQL 266.58 used for the other GeForce cards. High Quality
• Windows 7 64-bit; very latest updates
• DirectX July/November 2010
• All games are patched to their latest versions.
• vsync is forced off in the control panel.
• Varying AA enabled as noted in games and “forced” in Catalyst Control Center for UT3 ; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied; 16xAF forced in control panel for Crysis.
• All results show average, minimum and maximum frame rates except as noted.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
• Windows 7 64, all DX9 titles were run under DX9 render paths, DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths and DX11 titles under DX11 render paths.

The Benchmarks

• Vantage
• 3DMark11
• F.E.A.R.
• X3:Terran Conflict
• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
• Call of Duty 4
• Unreal Tournament 3
• Batman: Arkham Asylum
• Grand Theft Auto IV
• Serious Sam, Second Encounter HD (2010)
• Wolfenstein
• Left 4 Dead
• Grand Theft Auto IV
• Mafia II
• Call of Juarez
• Crysis
• Warhead
• Lost Planet
• World in Conflict
• Far Cry 2
• Just Cause 2
• H.A.W.X.
• Resident Evil 5
• Alien vs. Predator
• STALKER, Call of Pripyat
• Dirt 2
• F1 2010
• Metro 2033
• Lost Planet 2
• H.A.W.X. 2
• Heaven 2

We have got an interesting project going. Let’s check our results.

Vantage

Vantage is Futuremark’s DX10 test. It is really useful for tracking changes in a single system – especially driver changes. There are two mini-game tests, Jane Nash and Calico and also two CPU tests, but we are still focusing on the graphics performance. Here is a scene from Vantage’s second mini-game.

Let’s go right to the graphs and first check the basic tests with the default benchmark scores:

We note the rankings. Unfortunately, scores are completely meaningless when they are presented this way.

For our purposes here, Vantage is a meaningless test although they do attempt to compare one video card’s performance to another by using two short timedemos. For that matter we see good scaling as the GTX 550 Ti is overclocked although it never comes close to the GTX 460 performance in these two tests.  Let’s move on to the latest Futuremark benchmark, 3DMark11 which is DX11 only.

3DMark11

3DMark11 is Futuremark’s brand new DX11-only benchmark. We are keeping track of the overall (for these tests, meaningless) scores and the framerates of the 4 graphics tests (which are more meaningful). First the basic tests results.

We note the rankings. Unfortunately, scores are completely meaningless when they are presented in this way, especially the little score change from the EVGA overclock to the highest clocks we tested. However, the next set of tests actually measures framerates of four short timedemos that focus on DX11 graphics performance.

We see an interesting lineup. Unfortunately for our purposes, 3DMark11 scores are just as meaningless as Vantage in an attempt to compare one video card’s performance to another – even in the same system.

Let’s move on to PC games and to real world situations and we will create our “snapshot” of current performance of the new GTX 550 Ti to attempt to determine price to performance and how it fits in the current line up and especially how well it does against the HD 5770.

F.E.A.R.

F.E.A.R. – First Encounter Armed Assault is a DX9c game by Monolith Productions that was originally released in October 2005 by Vivendi Universal Production. Later, there were two expansions with the latest, Perseus Mandate, released in 2007. Although the game engine is aging, it still has some of the most spectacular effects of any game. F.E.A.R. showcases a powerful particle system, complete with sparks and smoke for collisions as well as featuring bullet marks and other effects including “soft shadows”. This is highlighted by the built-in performance test, although it was never updated.

This performance test will tell you how F.E.A.R. will run, but both of its expansions are progressively more demanding on your PC graphics and will run slower than the demo. We always run at least two sets of tests with all in-game features at ‘maximum’. F.E.A.R. uses the Jupiter Extended Technology engine from Touchdown Entertainment. We test this game with the most demanding settings. We use fully maxed details with 4xAA/16xAF; soft shadows ‘off’, as they do not play well with AA. Let’s start first at 2560×1600:

 

We see the GTX 550 Ti completely overwhelm its replacement, the GTS 450 and iteven overpowers its competition, the HD 5770.  The GTX 450 and the HD 5770 cannot play F.E.A.R. at the highest resolution whereas the GTX 560 Ti is fine at all of its clocks.  Let’s look at 1920×100:

At 1920×1200 resolution there is not much difference in practically playing F.E.A.R. between the fastest and the slowest video configurations as the minimums are already sufficiently high.  However, in this old DX9 game, the GTX 560 Ti is solidly faster than its replacement the GTX 450 and its competition the HD 5770.

X3: Terran Conflict

X3:Terran Conflict (X3:TC) is another beautiful stand-alone benchmark that runs multiple tests and will really strain a lot of older video cards. X3:TC is a space trading and combat simulator from Egosoft and is the most recent of their X-series of computer games.

X3:TC is a standalone expansion of X3: Reunion, based in the same universe and on the same engine. It complements the story of previous games in the X-Universe and especially continues the events after the end of X3: Reunion. Compared to Reunion, Terran Conflict features a larger universe, more ships, and of course, new missions. The X-Universe is huge. The Terran faction was added with their own set of technology including powerful ships and stations. Many new weapons systems were developed for the expansion and it has generally received good reviews. It has a rather steep learning curve.

First we note the results at 2560×1600 with completely maxed out settings plus 8xAA:

The minimums are the same but the GTX 550 Ti beats the HD 5770 which in turn is solidly faster than the GTX 450. d

 

All of our video cards run close to each other in a fairly tight grouping.  The GTX 550 Ti does its job and beats its rival the HD 5770 and cleans up over its replacement, the GTS 450. However, all of our video cards perform well and all of them experience similar minimum framerates and a similar playing experience. We also note no change in the minimums by overclocking although the GTX 550 Ti scales in the averages as expected.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is an objective-driven, class-based first person shooter set in the Quake universe. It was developed by id Software and Splash Damage and published by Activision. Quake Wars pits the combined human armies of the Global Defense Force against the technologically superior Strogg, an alien race who has come to earth to use humans for spare parts and food. It allows you to play a part, probably best as an online multi-player experience, in the battles waged around the world in mankind’s desperate war to survive.

Quake Wars is an OpenGL game based on id’s Doom3 game engine with the addition of their MegaTexture technology. It also supports some of the latest 3D effects seen in today’s games, including soft particles, although it is somewhat dated and less demanding on video cards than many DX10 games. id’s MegaTexture technology is designed to provide very large maps without having to reuse the same textures over and over again.

For our benchmark we chose the flyby, Salvage Demo. It is one of the most graphically demanding of all the flybys and it is very repeatable and reliable in its results. It is fairly close to what you will experience in-game. All of our settings are set to ‘maximum’ and we also apply 4xAA or 8xAA plus 16xAF in game. First we test at 2560×1600 resolution with all settings fully maxed in-game plus 4xAA/16xAF:

This game is not playable at this high resolution with any AA on our $130-$180 cards.  Set’s crank up the anti-aliasing from 4x to 8x while we test at 1920×1200 resolution.

The HD 5770 is a no show with the Catalyst 11-4 beta performance preview driver.  There are definite issues with the HD 5770 and this driver with all of the OpenGL games that we tested.  Fortunately this does not seem to affect the 6000 series which we tested later on just before this review was published nor does our HD 5770 have issues with Catalyst 11-2 WHQL driver.   The GTX 550 Ti is way faster than the GTS 450 and we could get very playable framerates at the target 1680×1050 with maxed out AA or at 1920×1200 with less AA.

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.

Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (CoD4) is a first person shooter running on a custom engine. It has nice graphics but the engine is somewhat dated compared to others and it runs well on modern PCs. It is the first CoD installment to take place in a modern setting instead of in World War II.

It differs from the previous Call of Duty games by having a more film-like plot that uses intermixed story lines from two perspectives; that of a USMC sergeant and a British SAS sergeant. There is also a variety of short missions where players control other characters in flashback sequences to advance the story. Call of Duty 4’s move to modern warfare introduced a variety of modern conventional weapons and technologies including plastic explosives.

There are currently about 20 multiplayer maps in CoD4. It is still very popular. CoD Modern Warfare 2 was also released with updated visuals but it is also not very demanding on graphics cards.

Our timedemo benchmark was created by ABT’s own Senior Editor and lead reviewer, BFG10K. It is very accurate and totally repeatable. Here is CoD4, first at 2560×1600 resolution with all in-game settings completely maxed out plus 4xAA:

Another no show with the HD 5770 due to driver issues with OpenGL. Let’s next test at 1920×1200.

We see that a popular multiplayer game is very playable even on midrange graphics cards and it plays very smoothly with this generation’s top video cards. The GTX 550 Ti does an admirable job compared with the GTX 450 that it replaces and it scales nicely with increasing clockspeeds.  This game would be very playable completely maxed-out at the GTX 550’s target resolution of 1680×1050 or with a bit less anti-aliasing applied at 1920×1080.

Unreal Tournament 3 (UT3)

Unreal Tournament 3 (UT3) is the fourth game in the Unreal Tournament series. UT3 is a first-person shooter and online multiplayer video game by Epic Games. Unreal Tournament 3 provides a good balance between image quality and performance, rendering complex scenes well even on lower-end PCs. Of course, on high-end graphics cards you can really turn up the detail.  UT3 is primarily an online multiplayer title offering several game modes and it also includes an offline single-player game with a campaign. For our tests, we used the very latest game patch for Unreal Tournament 3.

The game doesn’t have a built-in benchmarking tool, so we used FRAPS and did a fly-by of a chosen level. Here we note that performance numbers reported are a bit higher than compared to in-game. The map we use is called “Containment” and it is one of the most demanding of the fly-bys. Our tests were run at resolutions of 2560 x 1600 and 1920 x 1200 with UT3’s in-game graphics options set to their maximum values.

One drawback of the way the UT3 engine is designed is that there is no support for anti-aliasing built in. We forced 4xAA for 2560×1600 and 8xAA for 1920×1200 in each vendor’s control panel; 8xQ for Nvidia to match AMD Graphics’ 8xMSAA settings. We record a demo in the game and a set number of frames are saved in a file for playback. When playing back the demo, the game engine then renders the frames as quickly as possible, which is why you will often see it playing it back more quickly than you would actually play the game.

Here is Containment Demo, first at 2560×1600 with 4xAA forced in each vendor’s control panel:

Now at 1920 x 1200 and with 8xAA (8xQ in Nvidia’s Control Panel) forced.

There is absolutely no problem playing this game fully maxed-out with any of our graphics configurations except for the GTS 450.  The GTX 560 Ti has no trouble handling the HD 6870 although the HD 5770 just edges the overclocked GTX 550Ti in the averages at 1920×1200 although the GeForce beats the Radeon in the minimums.

Batman: Arkham Asylum (Game of the Year Edition) Batman: Arkham Asylum is an action-adventure/stealth video game based on DC Comics’ Batman. Arkham Asylum is based directly on the long-running comic book’s Dark Knight character. The Joker devised an elaborate plot from inside Arkham Asylum that Batman is personally forced to put a stop to. The game’s primary characters are superbly voiced.

The game is played as an over-the-shoulder, third-person perspective action-adventure game with a primary focus on Batman’s combat abilities, stealth, detective skills and complete with an arsenal of gadgets that can be used in both combat and as exploring in “detective mode”.

Batman: Arkham Asylum uses a highly modified version of the Unreal Engine 3. It does not support AA natively but must be added in and supported by the game’s developer. Unfortunately we cannot compare Batman: Arkham Asylum using our GeForce exactly against the Radeon with PhysX on; so all of our testing is with it off. We are using the Game of the Year Edition of Batman: Arkham Asylum which supports in-game AA settings for both Radeon and GeForce cards.

We begin testing at 2560×1600 with details maxed and with 8xAA applied in the game’s setting control panel (8xQ for Nvidia).

1920×1200 can only be faster.

All of our cards can play Batman at 1920×1200 with 8xAA. The HD 5770 is faster than the GTX 550 Ti although the GTS 450 is solidly beaten by its replacement.

Left 4 Dead

Left 4 Dead (L4D) is a 2008 co-op first-person shooter that was developed by Turtle Rock Studios and purchased by Valve Corporation during its development. Left 4 Dead uses Valve’s proprietary Source engine . L4D is set in the aftermath of a worldwide pandemic which pits its four protagonists against hordes of the infected zombies. There are four game modes: a single-player mode in which your allies are controlled by AI; a four-player, co-op campaign mode; an eight-player online versus mode; and a four-player survival mode. In all modes, an artificial intelligence (AI), dubbed the “Director”, controls pacing and spawns, to create a more dynamic experience with increased replay value. It is best as a multiplayer game with humans.

There is no built-in benchmark, so we created our own custom time demo which is very repeatable. The game is updated regularly by Steam and we chose the highest detail settings and 8xAA.  We will save our comments until after we present both charts.  First we test at 2560×1600 resolution:

On to our next chart at 1920×1200:

Left 4 Dead leaves the GTX 550 Ti generally ahead of the HD 5770. The GTS 450 even struggles at 1920×1200 with our settings.

Grand Theft Auto IV

Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV) is a sandbox-style action-adventure video game released by Rockstar in late 2008. It is the sixth game in the Grand Theft Auto series. Two episodic expansion packs have since been released since then as late as April of this year. The game is set in a redesigned rendition of Liberty City, a fictional city based heavily on modern day New York City. It follows Niko Bellic, a war veteran from Eastern Europe. He comes to the United States in search of the American Dream and enters a world of organized crime, gangs and corruption. GTA IV is mostly composed of elements from driving games and third-person shooters which features free-roaming gameplay. It features an online multiplayer mode, the first of the GTA series to do so. Here are the settings that we used. The 1.5GB GTX 480/570/580 and 2GB HD 69×0 Radeons, by virtue of having more than 1GB vRAM, can use even higher settings than the 1GB video cards (which are pictured below running nearly out of resources). Unfortunately, HD 6970 CrossFire and HD 6990 did not even allow us to change any settings and we could not even make a clean exit.

First we tried to test at 2560×1600 resolution.  The in-game menu did not allow us to set all of the detail levels to high.  So now we test at 1920×1200.

This benchmark appears to be at the very least, highly CPU-limited at 1920×1200.  In GTA-IV, the GTX 550 Ti wins over the HD 5770 by default as the GTX 450 also is faster.

Serious Sam Second Encounter HD (2010) Serious Sam is the title of a series of first-person shooters created by the Croatian development team Croteam. It follows the adventures of its hero Sam “Serious” Stone and his fight against the forces of the extraterrestrial overlord Mental who seeks to destroy humanity. Its gameplay is a throwback to early first-person shooters like Quake and Doom with the twist of being set in wide-open environments with large groups of enemies attacking at any time, and there are many hidden areas and treasures to find and puzzles to solve.

Serious Sam features cooperative gameplay and allows for split screen action supporting up to 4 players. Serious Sam: The Second Encounter was remade as “HD” using Serious Engine 3. It was released on April, 2010 for PC. Besides updated visuals, new game modes including “Co-op Tournament” and “Survival” for single player, were introduced in this remake.

We use the basic 3 “ultra” presets for benching Serious Sam: The Second Encounter HD. There is possible further fine-tuning which will make the game even more demanding, but we chose the “ultra” presets with only one higher GPU setting, to allow for testing beyond 1920×1080.

We test first at 2560×1600 resolution:

 

And finally at 1920×1200 with the same ultra presets:

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter HD on the Serious 3 engine is quite demanding . Although the GTX 560 Ti trades blows with the HD 6870, the HD 6950 is a bit faster and the stock GTX 550 Ti is solidly faster than the HD 5770 and an excellent upgrade replacement for the GTX 450.

Mafia II

Mafia II is a third-person action-adventure video game which is the sequel to Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven. It is developed by 2K Czech and is published by 2K Games and was released last year. Mafia II is set from 1943 to 1951 in Empire Bay which is a fictional city based mostly on San Francisco and New York City along with some influences from Chicago and also Detroit.

Mafia II is a gritty drama which chronicles the rise of World War II veteran Vito Scaletta who joins the Falcone Crime Family and becomes a ‘made’ man. There are 15 chapters in the game and over two hours of game engine generated cutscenes. Mafia II makes extensive use of Nvidia’s PhysX whose full effects are seen smoothly only by playing on a PhysX-enabled GeForce and preferably with a second video card dedicated to it.

For this article, we used the full retail game with Mafia II’s built-in benchmark with the highest settings for 2560×1600 and 1920×1200 – without PhysX – and this time we will reserve comment until after both charts.

First we test at 2560×1600.

 

Now at 1920×1200:

And finally at 1680×1050.

 

The GTX 560 Ti falls slightly behind the HD 6870 and it takes an overclocked GTX 550 Ti to beat the HD 5770.  As is usual, the GTX 450 is well replaced with a GTX 550 Ti although it is never in any danger of reaching GTX 460 speeds.

This covers our DX9 games. Let’s move on to DX10 and DX11 games to see if anything changes.

Call of Juarez

Call of Juarez is one of the very earliest DX10 games. It is loosely based on Spaghetti Westerns that became popular in the early 1970s. Call of Juarez features its Chrome Engine using Shader Model 4 with DirectX 10. Our benchmark is built into Call of Juarez. It runs a simple flyby of a level that is created to showcase its DX10 effects. It offers good repeatability and it is a good stress test for DX10 features in graphics cards, although it is not quite the same as actual gameplay because the game logic and AI are stripped out of this demo.

Performing Call of Juarez benchmark is easy. You are presented with a simple menu to choose resolution, anti-aliasing, and two choices of shadow quality options. We set the shadow quality on “high” and the shadow map resolution to the maximum, 2048×2048. At the end of the run, the demo presents you with the minimum, maximum, and average frame rate, along with the option to quit or run the benchmark again. We always ran the benchmark at least a second time and recorded that generally higher score.

Here are Call of Juarez DX10 benchmark results, first at 1920×1200 (there is no 2560×1600 option available in the benchmark):

Now we test at 1680×1050:

Here the GTX 550 Ti leads over the HD 5770.  The GTS 450 brings up the rear and the GTX 460 is solidly faster.

Lost Planet

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition is a Capcom port of an Xbox 360 game. It takes place on the icy planet of E.D.N. III which is filled with monsters, pirates, big guns, and huge bosses. This frozen world highlights high dynamic range lighting (HDR) as the snow-white environment reflects blinding sunlight as DX10 particle systems toss snow and ice all around.

The game looks great in both DirectX 9 and 10 and there isn’t really much of a difference between the two versions except perhaps shadows. Unfortunately, the DX10 version doesn’t look that much better when you’re actually playing the game and it still runs slower than the DX9 version.

We use the in-game performance test from the retail copy of Lost Planet and updated through Steam to the latest version for our runs. This run isn’t completely scripted as the creatures act a little differently each time you run it, requiring multiple runs. Lost Planet’s Snow and Cave demos are run continuously by the performance test and blend into each other.

Here are our benchmark results with the more demanding benchmark, Snow. All settings are fully maxed out in-game including 2x or 4xAA/16xAF. Let’s start with 1920×1200 resolution with 2xAA.

The resolution is set too high for our target cards.  Next we test at 1680×1050 and with 4xAA:

The HD 6870 is edged by the GTX 570 while the HD 5770 convincingly beats all flavors of GTX 550 Ti.  In fact, the HD 6870 is faster than our GTX 560 Ti .

CRYSIS

Next we move on to Crysis, a science fiction first person shooter by Crytek. It remains one of the most demanding games for any PC and it is also still one of the most beautiful games released to date. Crysis is based in a fictional near-future where an alien spacecraft is discovered buried on an island near the coast of Korea. The single-player campaign has you assume the role of USA Delta Force, ‘Nomad’ who is armed with futuristic weapons and equipment.

Crysis uses DirectX10 for graphics rendering. A standalone but related game, Crysis Warhead was released the following year. CryEngine2 is the game engine used to power Crysis and Warhead and it is an extended version of the CryEngine that also powers Far Cry. As well as supporting Shader Model 2.0, 3.0, and DirectX10’s 4.0, CryEngine2 is also multi-threaded to take advantage of dual core SMP-aware systems and Crytek has developed their own proprietary physics system, called CryPhysics.

It is noted that actually playing this game is a bit slower than the demo implies. All of our settings are set to the in-game maximum’s “very high” including 2xAA for 2560×1600, 1920×1200 and for 1680×1050 and we force 16xAF in the control panels. Here is Crysis’ Island Demo benchmark, first at 1920×1200 resolution:

Now we test at 1680×1050.

Here the GTX 550 Ti is behind the HD 5770 until it is overclocked past EVGA clocks. We will make sure to test further in Warhead, a more well-optimized game.

Crysis Warhead

Crysis Warhead is a science fiction first-person shooter computer game developed by the Hungarian studio Crytek and published by Electronic Arts. Crysis Warhead is a stand-alone expansion to Crysis that was released in 2008. It is optimized better than the original Crysis to look as good with less hardware resources required to render it.

We test first at 1920×1200 with 2xAA at maxed-out Enthusiast (Very High) settings.

Now we test at 1680×1050 with 2xAA/16xAF with maxed-out in-game “Enthusiast” (very high) settings:

The GTX 560 Ti is slightly faster than the HD 6870 and as in Crysis, the HD 5770 beats the GTX 550 Ti until it is overclocked when the situation becomes reversed.

FarCry 2

Far Cry 2 uses the name of the original Far Cry but it is not connected to the first game as it brings you a new setting and a new story. Ubisoft created it based on their Dunia Engine. The game setting takes place in an unnamed African country, during an uprising between two rival warring factions. Your mission is to kill “The Jackal”; the Nietzsche-quoting mercenary that arms both sides of the conflict that you are dropped into.

The Far Cry 2 game world is loaded in the background and on the fly to create a completely seamless open world. The Dunia game engine provides good visuals that scale well. The Far Cry 2 design team actually went to Africa to give added realism to this game. One thing to especially note is Far Cry 2’s very realistic fire propagation by their engine that is a far cry from the scripted fire and explosions that we are used to seeing.

First we test Far Cry 2 benchmark at 2560×1600 with AI enabled and we use the Ranch Long benchmark with ultra settings plus 4xAA.

We are getting unsatisfactory minimums so let’s move on down to 1920×1200 resolution while increasing our AA from 4x to 8x.

Better but we still need to move our resolution to the GTX 550 Ti’s target resolution of 1680×1050 and still with 8xAA.

In Far Cry 2, the GTX 560 Ti even beats the fastest Radeon we tested, the HD 6950, in this game. In like manner, we see the GTX 550 Ti solidly take a performance lead over the HD 5770.

 

World in Conflict Soviet Assault

World In Conflict is set in an alternate history Earth where the Cold War did not end and Russia invaded the USA in 1989 and the remaining Americans decided to strike back. World in Conflict (WiC) is a real-time tactical/strategy video game developed by Massive Entertainment and released in 2007. The expansion, Soviet Assault, was released in 2009.

Although it is generally considered a real-time strategy (RTS) game, World in Conflict includes gameplay typical of real-time tactical (RTT) games. WiC is filled with real vehicles from both the Russian and the American military. There are also tactical aids, including calling in massive bombing raids, access to chemical warfare, nuclear weapons, and far more.

Here is yet another amazing and very customizable and detailed DX10 benchmark that is available in-game or as a stand-alone. We use the full retail game’s in-game benchmark as it offers more settings than the demo and is updated by patches. The particle effects and explosions in World in Conflict Soviet Assault are truly spectacular! Every setting is fully maxed out.

We start our benching at 2560×1600:

Now we test at 1920×1200

You can call the results in World in Conflict a blow-out between the HD 5770 and the GTX 550 Ti.  The GTS 450 is eating radioactive dust while the GTX 550 Ti can achieve playable results in this game at 1680×1050.

Just Cause 2

Just Cause 2 is a 2010 sandbox-style action video game by Swedish developer Avalanche Studios and Eidos Interactive and is the sequel to the 2006 video game, Just Cause. Just Cause 2 employs the Avalanche Engine 2.0 which an updated version of the engine used in the original and there are impressive visuals as it is made just for DX10.

It is set on the fictional tropical island of Panau in Southeast Asia. Rico Rodriguez returns as the protagonist who aims to overthrow the evil dictator “Baby” Panay and also to confront his former boss, rogue agent Tom Sheldon. The game play is similar to that of its predecessor in that the player is free to roam the huge open world without a need to focus on the storyline. The Just Cause 2 AI has been rewritten and it even includes dual-grappling hooks which give players the ability to tether unlimited objects to each other including the tethering of enemies to vehicles and to each other which works very well as one of your goals is to cause maximum chaos. It is a lot of fun!

Here are the maximum settings available to a GeForce card; the bottom two, the Bokeh Filter and GPU water simulation, are unavailable to Radeons and they are left off on all runs to give solid apples-to-apples comparisons for all of our tested video cards and we used the Dark Tower benchmark built into the retail game. First the benches at 2560×1600 with 8xAA:

Let’s look at the performance at 1920×1200 but now with 2xAA, as in our usual testing:

Again it takes the overclocked GTX 560 Ti to catch the stock HD 5770.

Here we see the HD 5770 run faster than the GTX 550 until it is overclocked.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. is an air combat video game developed published by Ubisoft. It was released in United States on March 6, 2009. You have the opportunity to fly 54 aircraft over real world locations and cities in somewhat realistic environments that are created with satellite data. This game is a more of a take on flying than a real simulation and it has received mixed reviews.

The game story takes place during the time of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. H.A.W.X. is set in the year 2014 where private military companies have replaced government-run military in many countries. The player is placed into the cockpit as an elite ex-military pilot who is recruited by one of these corporations to work for them as a mercenary. You later return to the US Air Force with a team as you try to prevent a full scale terrorist attack on the United States which was started by your former employer.

H.A.W.X. runs on DX10.1 faster and with more detail than on the DX10 pathway. All of our video cards can take advantage of DX10.1. Let’s check out H.A.W.X. with our top cards at 2560×1600 with fully maxed out in-game settings and 8xAA:

The GTX 550 Ti jets away from the HD 5770 and the GTS 450.  Here are our results at 1920×1200 resolution:

The new GTX 550 Ti is clearly the top gun in its class.

Resident Evil 5

Resident Evil 5 is a survival horror third-person shooter developed and published by Capcom that has become the best selling single title in the series. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil series and it was released for Windows in September 2009. Resident Evil 5 revolves around two investigators pulled into a bio-terrorist threat in a fictional town in Africa.

Resident Evil 5 features online co-op play over the internet and also takes advantage of Nvidia’s 3D Vision technology. The PC version comes with exclusive content the consoles do not have. The developer’s emphasis is in optimizing high frame rates but they have implemented HDR, tone mapping, depth of field and motion blur into the game.

Resident Evil 5‘s custom game engine, ‘MT Framework’, already supports DX10 to benefit from less memory usage and faster loading. Resident Evil 5 gives you choice as to DX10 or Dx 9 and we naturally ran the DX10 pathway. There are two benchmarks built-into Resident Evil 5. We chose the variable benchmark as it is best suited for testing video cards. Here it is at 2560×1600 resolution with maxed out in-game setting plus 8xAA:

We lost our GTX 550 Ti maximum overclock results although we see the HD 5770 faster than the stock or EVGA-clocked GTX 550 Ti.  Here are the results at 1920×1200 resolution:

We see the HD 5770 continue to beat the stock and EVGA-clocked GTX 550 Ti until the Ti reaches its maximum overclock.

All of our video cards turn in respectable performances and their overall playability is similar at 1920×1200 except for the GTS 450.  And this time we see the GTX 550 Ti lead over HD 5770 at all clocks at its target resolution of 1680×1050.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Call of Pripyat is the third game in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. All of these games have non-linear storylines which feature role-playing game elements. In both games, the player assumes the identity of a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.; an illegal artifact scavenger in “The Zone” which encompasses about 30 square kilometers. It is the location of an alternate reality story surrounding the Chernobyl Power Plant after another (fictitious) explosion. S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Call of Pripyat features “a living breathing world” with highly developed NPC creature AI.

Call of Pripyat is compatible with DirectX 8, 9, 10 and 10.1. It uses the X-ray 1.6 Engine with dX 11, one outstanding feature being the inclusion of real-time GPU tesselation– a Shader model 3.0 & 4.0 graphics engine featuring HDR, parallax and normal mapping, soft shadows, motion blur, weather effects and day-to-night cycles. As with other engines using deferred shading, the original DX9c X-ray Engine does not support anti-aliasing with dynamic lighting enabled, although the DX10 and DX 11 versions do.

We are using the stand-alone “official” benchmark by Clear Sky’s creators. We picked the most stressful test out of the four, “Sun shafts”. It brings the heaviest penalty due to its extreme use of shaders to create DX10/DX10.1 and DX11 effects. We ran this benchmark fully maxed out in DX11.0 with “ultra” settings plus 4xAA, including applying edge-detect MSAA which chokes performance even further.

Here we present our maxed out DX11 settings for S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Call of Pripyat DX11 benchmark with 2xAA at 1920×1200:

The GTX 550 Ti beats its competition but is still too low in the minimums.  Now we drop the resolution to 1680×1050.

This game is still really hard on mid-range video cards.  Although the GTX 550 Ti is significantly faster than the GTX 450 and the HD 5770, we would recommend dropping details further if you want to play at 1680×1050 in DX11.

Aliens vs Predator Aliens vs. Predator, known to fans as Aliens versus Predator 3 or AVP3 is a video game developed by Rebellion Developments, and published by Sega in February 2010. It is the sixth game of the Aliens versus Predator game series.

There are three campaigns in the game, one for each race or faction (the Predators, the Aliens and the Colonial Marines), that form one main storyline although they differ in objectives depending on your choice of campaign. Alien vs Predators DX11 benchmark is a stand alone bench that as the name says is only for DX11 cards. It is more demanding than actually playing the game generally.

First we bench at 1920×1200 with maxed out settings plus 2xAA.

The EVGA GTX 550 Ti just edges the stock HD 5770. Now we test at 1680×1050 and 2xAA.

With Aliens vs Predator DX11 benchmark it takes the EVGA-clocked GTX 550 Ti to match or beat the stock HD 5770 although it is a great improvement over the GTX 450.

DiRT 2

Colin McRae: DiRT 2 is a racing game that was released in September 2009, and is the sequel to Colin McRae: Dirt. It includes many new race-events, including stadium events as your RV travels from one event to another in many real-world environments across four continents. Dirt 2 includes five different event types even allowing you to compete at new locations. It also includes a new multiplayer mode.

Dirt 2 is powered by an updated version of the EGO engine which was featured in Race Driver: Grid. This updated EGO engine also features an updated physics engine. We are using the Dirt 2 full retail game built-in benchmark at the highest “ultra” DX11 setting with 8xAA applied.

First we test at 2560×1600:

It takes the extra overclock we gave the GTX 550 Ti to beat the HD 5770 but our tested resolution is too demanding.  What about 1920×1200?

This time the stock GTX 550 Ti is faster than the HD 5770.  Let’s aim for the GTX 550’s target resolution.

The GTX 550 Ti gets the single-GPU DiRT 2 checkered flag on the DX11 pathway in a two-video card race as the GeForce pulls further away from the HD 5770 at 1920×1200 and at 1680×1050 resolutions. However, even the lowest priced GTS 450 can play this game satisfactorily at medium-high resolutions.

Metro 2033
Metro 2033 is the “Crysis” of 2010. It is a very demanding game on any PC with the very latest DX11 visuals. Metro 2033 is an action-oriented video game with a combination of survival horror, and first-person shooter elements. The game is based on the novel “Metro 2033” by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. It was developed by 4A Games in Ukraine and released in March 2010.

The game utilizes multi-platform 4A Engine and there is some doubt if the games engine is related to the original XRay engine used in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. The Metro 2033 story takes place mostly in post-apocalyptic Moscow’s metro system but occasionally the player has to go above ground on some missions and to search for valuables. Metro 2033‘s locations reflect the dark atmosphere of real metro tunnels but in a much more dangerous and lethal manner. Strange phenomena and noises are frequent, and mostly the player has to rely only on their flashlight to find their way around in otherwise total darkness. Even more deadly is the surface as it is severely irradiated and a gas mask must be worn at all times due to the toxic air.

THQ has released an official benchmark for Metro 2033 which provides minimum/maximum/average framerates, and you can adjust many graphics settings including PhysX, AA, DOF and tessellation, and the number of runs. Our presets are set to maximum (very high) with 1xAA and no PhysX nor DOF enabled. Here is our first chart at 1920×1200.

We are noticing severe lag. We continue to test at Very High settings with AA and DOF off except as noted and now at 1680×1050:

All of our single cards struggle with Metro 2033 with the aggressive settings that we used. Metro 2033 is an interesting benchmark and we see the HD 5770 is barely ahead of the GTX 550 Ti only at stock clocks. 

F1 2010

F1 2010 is a racing game based on the 2010 season of the Formula One world championship and the sequel to the 2009 video game in the same series. It was released in September 2010 by Codemasters. The EGO 1.5 engine powers it. The weather system is one of the best seen in a racing game and requires the player to adjust to changing track conditions. Watch out for bad AI drivers! First we test at 2560×1600 using ultra settings with the built-in benchmark.

We have unacceptable dips in the minimums for our target cards. The HD 5770 races away from all varieties of the GTX 550 Ti.  Now we test at 1920×1200.

In this game, the Radeons have the advantage and they take the checkered flag.

Lost Planet 2

Lost Planet 2 is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition and is also made by Capcom. The events take place ten years after the first game and on the same, now thawed, EDN III. The PC version was released on October 12, 2010 and it runs on the MT-Framework 2.0 engine; an updated version of the engine used in several Capcom games. Campaign mode can have up to 4 players working together over the Internet. Lost Planet 2 allows players to create and customize their own characters which will allow them to unlock more things after leveling up and downloading content.

We are using the retail game’s built-in benchmark in DX11 with maximum settings. As the game is quite demanding, we first test at 2560×1600 resolution with no AA.

Just as in the original game, none of our single-GPU cards can play easily play Lost Planet 2 at 2560×1600 at the highest settings.  Now we test at 1920×1200 and with 4xAA.

Our settings are still too demanding although the GTX 550 Ti is much faster than the HD 5770.

We would not play this game in DX11 with either the GTX 560 Ti nor the HD 5770.  However, the GeForce is significantly faster and both cards beat up on the GTS 450.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an air combat video game developed by Ubisoft for PC. We are using the built-in benchmark from the full retail game. The way tessellation is implemented shows AMD graphics cards are perhaps unnaturally slow compared with other DX11 titles although their newer drivers have made significant performance gains over earlier drivers in H.A.W.X. 2. without sacrificing any noticeable image quality.

H.A.W.X. 2 runs on DX11 faster and with more detail than on the DX10 pathway. Here the emphasis is on terrain tessellation which looks outstanding in DX11 and “flat” in DX10. Let’s check out H.A.W.X. 2 with our video cards at 2560×1600 and with fully maxed out in-game settings and with 8xAA

The GTX 550 Ti simply flys away from the HD 5770 and the overclocked Ti even beats the much more powerful HD 5770 in this benchmark.  And now we test at 1920×1200 resolution:

(HD 6950 and HD 6870 results are reversed above)

We see the GTX 550 Ti flying away from the HD 5770 and even beating the HD 5870 (which is limited by its single tessellator) . However, the single Radeons can also play this game maxed out at 1920×1200. The GTXes are top guns in this benchmark. 

Heaven 2.0 Unigine

Finally we come to our last benchmark, Heaven 2.5, on the Unigine engine. It uses DX11 and heavy tessellation which will strain any graphics card. At least two DX11 games based on Unigine are expected to be released this year. We use the setting for “extreme tessellation” and high shaders and we also set AF to 16x. We will tell you right now that this test chokes the GTX 590 at the highest settings and resolution so we do not run it at 2560×1600.

Even the GTS 450 had no trouble beating the HD 5770 with extreme tessellation and 2xAA at 1920×1200.  Now let’s look at 1680×1050:

The GTX 550 Ti is clearly the fastest over the HD 5770 and even the older architecture HD 5770 at the extreme tessellation setting of this benchmark.  However, this is a synthetic benchmark and we will withhold judgment until we play PC games using the Unigine engine.

3D Vision Testing

We received our 3D Vision Kit from ASUS/Nvidia the same day that we received our GTX 590 a couple of weeks ago. The kit is pictured as shown below:

The 23 inch 1920×1080 ASUS 120Hz display is beautiful and the screen is extra-bright for 3D Vision.  One thing you will notice is that the game is darker in 3D then in 2D and your LCD’s brightness or gamma needs to be turned up to compensate.  We have spent a little more time playing our favorite games in 3D Vision and we generally have great news to report.

Even older games not made for 3D can work very well with the added dimension of depth.  Serious Sam, Second Edition (2010) is an example of where it works well if you don’t crank up the depth too much.  Aiming is good and the monsters attacks are even more off the wall and fun with the added dimension.

Here are the results of our benching with 3D Vision enabled versus 2D with the GTX 550 Ti. There is a significant performance hit because each frame is rendered twice – once for the left eye and once for the right. We will go into much more detail in an upcoming review of 3D Vision.  We tested and played two games – Batman Arkham Asylum and Resident Evil 5 at our display’s native resolution of 1920×1080 at 120Hz.

All of the games were played with maximum settings with a single EVGA-clocked GTX 550 Ti. Motion Blur is left off and AA is set to 2x.

Here are Batman Arkham Asylum 3D Vision results:

	Minimum	Average	Maximum
2D	52	81	99
3D Vision	29	47	59

3D Vision is quite impressive as you now have another dimension of depth to immerse you even more into your game.  Best of all, as you can see it is completely playable on a single GTX 550 Ti.  Batman is described as 3D Vision “ready” and there are no oddities in playing this game whatsoever in the couple of hours this editor spent playing it.  There is no eyestrain, headaches or irritation to report as depth can be set easily and playing at 120Hz reduces flickering to nearly zero.  3D is a way to immerse the gamer into the action much better than 2D.

One gripe has been addressed about getting back to 2D quickly – simply press the front of the emitter and you can effortlessly switch between 2D and 3D as sometimes you have to read menus that are in 2D.

Resident Evil 5 is a little more resource-hungry than Batman and we would recommend dropping setting further than what we used.  We did not play the game for very long (as we did with Batman) but will give you our performance results with a single EVGA-clocked GTX 550 Ti at 1920×1050@120Hz. Motion Blur is left off and AA is set to 2x while other settings are completely maxed out.

Here are Resident Evil 5 3D Vision performance testing results:

	Average
2D	54.3
3D Vision	28.2

3D Vision aims for 60 frames per second; 30 per eye. Triple buffering is locked on in the drivers and cannot be disabled. We shall cover this in great detail in our 3D Vision evaluation article coming up in about a month. In the meantime, stay tuned for more 3D Vision results in upcoming evaluations.

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.

Conclusion

This has been quite an enjoyable experience for us in comparing our EVGA GTX 550 Ti versus our HD 5770 and other video card configurations and we look forward to evaluating further new products from AMD and Nvidia. Our original EVGA GTX 550 Ti was waylaid by the delivery company and we had to set the replacement aside for a week or so to benchmark the GTX 590. Fortunately, we have seen market pricing in action over the past two weeks, so that we can provide you with a more reliable price to performance comparison now than when it originally launched.

We feel priviliged to bring you our very first benchmarks and performance testing of Nvidia’s amazing value GTX 550 Ti. We like it quite a lot and it has exceeded this editor’s own expectations. In the meantime, feel free to comment below, ask questions or have a detailed discussion in our ABT forum. If you have any requests on what you would like for us to focus on for further testing or for any other information, please join our ABT forum or leave a comment.

Nvidia’s Strategy and AMD’s likely response

We have always likened the intense competition between AMD Graphics and Nvidia as a war or wargame.  It is a real time strategy game of the highest order and they respond to each other’s moves as in a world class chess match.  Nvidia has a specific purpose in bringing out the GTX 550 Ti now – to go after AMD’s bread and butter line-up, the HD 5770 – with a GTS 450 replacement.

In our original review of the GTS 450 last September, we saw it go toe-to-toe with the HD 5750 although its performance fell short of the HD 5770’s.  Nvidia filled their product line-up “hole” with discounted versions of the GTx 460 and especially the 768MB version although it is a more expensive card to produce than the GTS 450.  Nvidia’s strategy worked and the discounted GTX 460s put pressure on AMD and gained some marketshare at a cost.  So Nvidia’s logical choice now is to bring out a cheaper-to-produce GTS 450 replacement that can meet or beat the HD 5770 in the same approximate $150 ($129-$169) range.  It is easy to find the HD 5770 at or below the $129 price point – the very cheapest we have found is $100 after rebate; they are usually around $120, and the HD 6850 usually begins just above $150 (with rebates).

After just two weeks since the GTX 550 Ti’s launch, we see that you can get a GTX 460-1GB overclocked edition for $170, a regular GTX 460-1GB like we tested for $139, a EVGA GTX 550 Ti just like the one we are featuring for $129 and the very cheapest GTX 550 Ti we could find is $125.  So there is excellent value right now from both AMD and Nvidia and market pricing has taken hold.

Is Nvidia’s strategy successful?   We believe that Nvidia has found an inexpensive and worthy replacement for the GTS 450 in GTX 550 Ti.  It is the same launch price, so similar market conditions have exerted the same kind of forces to balance the card’s pricing with each other.  And the real proof of the GTX 550 Ti’s success will be determined by how and if AMD responds.  It is unlikely that they will sit by and let the GTX 560 Ti make inroads into their marketshare and they already have overclocked the HD 5770 and dropped its pricing.

We feel pretty certain we will soon see at least a spiritual replacement for the HD 5830 which is currently an expensive card to produce and priced rather high for its performance.  Since AMD’s OEM’s have already rebadged HD 5750 and HD 5770 into HD 6750/6770, we can no doubt expect a new 6000 series card which is inexpensive to produce and will go after the GTX 550 TI.  And then of course Nvidia will probably respond with a non-Ti GTX 560 or GTX 560 “SE” as this great real time strategy game with AMD continues.  It makes for exciting times and good for the consumer!

Of course we are speculating on the future.  For this moment – and even considering near-future releases – the GTX 550 Ti has come in and done exactly what Nvidia intended to do – replace the GTS 450 with a similarly inexpensive and nearly 30 percent higher-performing video card for the mainstream 1680×1050 gamer.  They have brought it in at $150 at allowed market pricing to drop it to $129 even for the overclocked EVGA premium GTX 560 Ti.  At that price point, it is unbeatable for this snapshot we have taken of this moment in time.  And the future looks good as it is a decently strong performer for its price.  If you can spend ten dollars more, the GTX 460-1GB is in a higher class.  And you can get a GTX 460-768M version for even less although 768MB seems to be a little low just from a marketing perspective; they are great performers for even 1920×1080 but we suspect they won’t be around for many more months as Nvidia and AMD continue to upgrade their line ups from top-to-bottom.

EVGA GTX 560 Ti

Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• Nvidia’s GTX 560 Ti is much faster than the GTS 450 and it wins more benches than it loses to the HD 57y0. Nvidia has brought good performance into a $150 (suggested etail) price-point package.
• The price has already dropped to $129 for this EVGA GTX 550 Ti!
• The EVGA GTX 560 Ti offers a guaranteed +50MHz over the stock clocks and there is further room for overclocking and good scalibility.
• New Fermi GF110 architecture brings support for GPU computing and a level of performance way beyond the last generation.
• DX11 and great support for tessellation, PhysX and CUDA, and 3D gaming bring realism to gaming
• EVGA’s highly efficient cooler is great for achieving and keeping your OC by keeping your GPU cool. It is one awesome cooler that tames GTX 590’s thermals very quietly, even at full load.
• SLI is possible with two of these cards; good performance for Surround.  A cheap future drop-in upgrade is possible with a SLI motherboard.
• It is an EVGA card with a superb warranty and all of the benefits and extras that come with it including great support and a “community” of enthusiasts.
• Awesome overclocking tools are provided with EVGA Precision and OC Scanner and you can adjust the voltage with ELEET.
• Free copy of 3DMark11 when registering your new EVGA GTX 560 Ti worth $20

Cons:

• Future uncertainty about AMD’s response.

That’s it. For about the same price as an overclocked HD 5770, you get all the features that Nvidia video cards have to offer in a very solidly-built, cool and quiet-running EVGA GTX 550 Ti! If you require quiet running, EVGA’s superb quiet cooling is a real winner.  Considering that you can get the EVGA GTX 560 Ti with free performance guaranteed for $129 from a (USA) etailer – this is after rebate and it includes the Mafia II game!! – we give it our Great Value award and a hearty thumbs up!

The Competition:

The ATI Radeon HD 5770 offers its own set of unique features. Launched 17 months ago, the ATI Radeon HD 5770 continues to offer excellent performance at now discounted price points. It gives you an immersive gaming experience with AMD Eyefinity Technology; driving up to three displays simultaneously and AMD HD3D technology for stereoscopic 3D gaming and Blu-ray 3D playback. The HD 5770 scales well also when overclocked. With AMD you also have the possibility of pairing up two HD 5770s for CrossFire-X or for even more flexibility paired with a more powerful card.

The Future

We do not know what the future will bring, but this amazing card brings a great value to the Fermi family of upgraded GTX “snipers” in Nvidia’s lineup. This editor believes that Nvidia brings a very remarkable full-featured DX11 GPU lineup to the market that will find good acceptance among customers and their fans alike. Fermi architecture is impressive and flexible and it does translate to performance in gaming. We have also seen Nvidia’s drivers improve and their multi-GPU SLI scaling for newer games is very impressive. If you currently game on an older card, you will do yourself a big favor by upgrading. The move to a GTX 550 Ti will give you better visuals on the DX11 pathway and you are no doubt thinking of GTX 550 Ti SLI further down the road if you want to get even higher performance as you may want to use Suround’s three-panel display or even 3D Vision for really intense gaming as we saw with a couple of games that we tested.

If the many exclusive features of the new GTX 550 Ti appeal to you and you are gaming at 1680×1050 , you cannot go wrong. In this editor’s experience, it is also a great choice if you are considering overclocking further as scaling is superb and EVGA’s quiet cooling is up to the task. The competition is hot as the competing Radeons offer their own set of features including a cheaper way to experience 3-panel multi-display with Eyefinity.

Stay tuned, there is a lot coming from us at ABT. We are going to follow up this review with much more testing of 3D Vision and continue our ongoing evaluation of SLI versus CrossFire which of course includes the GTX 590 vs. HD 6990.  We also believe that another video card is going to be launched shortly.

Mark Poppin

ABT Senior Editor

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