ASUS Ultimate GeForce GTX 550 Ti Video Card Review

[Apoptosis]

ASUS Ultimate GeForce GTX 550 Ti Video Card Review

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti graphics card is going to be a popular gaming graphics card in 2011 due to it's lucrative $150 price point. When the GeForce GTX 550 Ti was launched last week we noticed that ASUS came out of the gate with not one, but three cards for this series. We take a look at their fastest card, the ASUS UL ENGTX550 Ti DC/DI/1GD5, which is clocked at 1015MHz!

The ASUS Ultimate GTX550 Ti video card was found to be between 9 to 14% faster than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX550 Ti reference design in our testing, but that was expected since it operates at a 1015MHz versus the standard 900MHz clock speeds. The ASUS Ultimate GTX 550 Ti also ran cooler at full load and we love the look of the card thanks to the custom GPU cooler and black PCB design. When it comes down to it the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti is a solid video card that is aimed at gamers that run 1680x1050 or smaller resolutions. If you happen to fit in that category then you should find that the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is a very capable video card...

Article Title: ASUS Ultimate GeForce GTX 550 Ti Video Card Review
Article URL: http://legitreviews.com/article/1572/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $169.99

[Major_A]

Why would I get this over a GTX 460 768MB card? Isn't that the real question here? I mean you can get the GTX 460 MSI Twin Frozr II for $130 after a $20 MIR.

[Apoptosis]

Great point... I need to talk about that in the conclusion...

I was told by NVIDIA that the GeForce GTX 460 will soon be EOL and will be phased out over time. So six months from now the GTX 550 Ti will be available and the GTX 460 won't be. But, you are 100% correct in that the GeForce GTX 460 is a better value and just as overclocking friendly. Both are available now, but won't be soon.

[Sttm]

Looking at it id guess Nvidia feels that they have caught up to ATI after coming out behind with the GF100 cards and no longer need a great product like the GTX 460 on the market. So they are replacing it at the price point with a lower performance card and expect the consumer to pay for a 560ti if they want that performance level.

The consumer is getting screwed in 6 months when you cannot get a 460 anymore. Maybe Ati will throwdown the gauntlet and push the 6870 down to $150 and force Nvidia to compete again!