Is NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti good for gaming?
The NVIDIA GEFORCE
550 TI released back in March of 2011 with a price of 149 USD this fully
unlocked GF
116 GPU was on a mission to strike down the Radeon HD 5770 while it succeeded
in beating it by five to ten percent it was also priced 35% higher and used more
power while doing it regardless the Radeon HD 5770 was the least of its worries
its older cousin the GTX 460 768 megabyte version was still being sold for $20
less while being 15% faster and on the AMD side of the fence the Radeon HD 6850
didn't cost much more and offered nearly 25% more performance so where did that
leave the
GTX 550 TI well let's just say it spent some time in no-man's land too much for too little
and too late the card we're looking at today is the EVGA Super clock version of
the gtx 550ti the card was kept in really good shape and when we
removed the
stock cooler there were some dust to be found but nothing out of the ordinary the
cooling solution on the card was rather simple it uses a flower type heatsink
reminiscent on one you might find on an Intel CPU but a larger
footprint
the memory modules and VR arm components have no passive cooling while they
don't require much they are actively cooled by the fan next I removed all the
dust and replace a thermal paste this super clock version was the highest
clocked model that EVGA offered at the time it has a core clock that's nine
percent higher than reference at 981 megahertz it's memory was clocked 10%
higher at 4514 megahertz effective we'll be testing all the games today at
these frequencies now let's see how far we're able to clock her up on the core
we were able to achieve another 9% up to 1075 mega Hertz and on the memory we
were able to increase it by 6% making the memory 4,800 mega Hertz effective all
right well now that we have everything dialled in let's see how the gtx 550 ti and
modern games the first game we fired up was
1)The
Witcher 3 and with the low preset with medium textures we average 34 frames per
second overclocked that number grew 11% to 38 and while the game was playable
we did experience a fair amount of inconsistent frame times as shown on screen
since the majority of these spikes are above an 8 milliseconds Swing they are
felt a stutter while playing the game not a super smooth experience
2) Battlefield
1 and in campaign mode with the medium preset we saw an average frame rate of
43 overclock that number jumped up 6 percent to 46 frame times look great and
the game played very well also no multiplayer performance would be similar but
you'd have to drop the graphics preset too low
3) Overwatch
is the next game up and at 1080p with 100% resolution scale using the low
graphics preset we saw an average frame rate of 62 overclocked that number rose
11% to 69 and as always frame times were excellent and the gameplay was very
smooth the very popular
4) PUBG is
up next and it's a low preset with 100% resolution scale we saw 30 frames per
second on average pretty much the same story here with most of the Fermi cards
that we've tested thus far but unlike the others the 550 ti could only muster
this frame rate at 720p and while our 0.1% lows show average frame times these
are really only felt when parachuting into the game there were a couple areas
as shown in our 4-minute benchmarking run but it really wasn't that bad overall.
5) Rise of the Tomb Raider is the next up and the built-in benchmark with low settings the 550 ti spit out 42 frames per second overclocked we saw that number shoot up
9 percent to
46 frame times are excellent and I would personally lock
the game at
30fps for a console like experience
6)Hell-blade
sensuous sacrifices up next and with the medium graphics preset we saw an
average frame rate of 31 overclocked that number rose 6% to 33 despite what the
numbers show frame times only took a dive when frames started recording as shown
on screen throughout our 2-minute run frame times are actually very good giving
us a smooth 30FPS console experience.
7) CSGO is up next and here we're using a recorded professional
match for consistent benchmark with high settings with no AAA we saw an average
frame rate of 122 overclocked that number rose 7% to 131 frame times did
improve when the card was overclocked and looking at our frame time graph there
were four to five times in our 55 second run that noticeable shutters were felt.
8) Rainbow
six siege is up next and using the built-in benchmark with the medium graphics
preset we saw 52 frames per second on average overclocked we jumped up 7% to 56
frame times were great and as a note 60 frames per second on average is
obtainable with some
tweaking to
the graphic options the
second.
9) Fallout 4
and at medium settings with FXAA and 16x AF we saw 48 frames per second on
average overclocked that number rose 4% to 50 frame times were actually really
good in this game which was surprising we only experienced stutters towards the
end of our 90 second run where we crossed a bridge in the game we tested this
multiple times and it was repeatable every time I can't say for sure what
caused it but it could be the game engine or a VRAM.
10) GTA 5
here we shot for the stars running the
game at 1080p we chose the normal settings throughout but with no AAA and 16x
AF we were to achieve 70 frames per second on average in overclock that number
jumped up 8% to 76 frame times were great in the game rent amazingly well
although it didn't look the best at these settings jumping into our power
consumption tests we fired up.
The Witcher
3 to test total system power draw and max GPU temperatures with our card
running at the stock frequencies and fan speed left on auto we saw the 550 ti
top out at 71 c while the host system was pulling 192 watts from the wall after
factoring PSU efficiency the whole system was roughly consuming 163 watts
moving on to our overclocked results we kept the fan speed on auto and it topped
out at 75 C total system power consumption was a solid 216 watts at the wall
again after factoring PSU efficiency the whole system is roughly consuming 183
Watts comparing these numbers to the HD 5770 we just reviewed it looks as
though the 550 ti uses 30 watts more at stock and 40 Watts more overclocked also
know we'll be matching up both these cards against each other in the future so
do stay tuned for that I also wanted to mention that when the fan speed was
left on auto their car was extremely quiet at full load at 75 percent you could
definitely hear the card but it really wasn't needed so how does a gtx 550 ti
hold up in 2017 well as you can see if you wanted to play modern triple-a games
then be prepared to play at 720p with low to medium settings just to obtain a
decent frame rate games like Overwatch in gta5 silver I'm pretty well at 1080p
but be prepared to settle for low settings free to play in competitive games
like counter-strike and paladins play very well but to be fair they play well
on most cards I was surprised to see that PUBG was good for 30 fps at 720p with
decent frame times that is it could be enough for someone to win some chicken
dinners though that someone isn't me alright well that wraps up our 2017 look
at the GTX 550 TI.
No , I will never recommend you to buy this card for gaming in 2022. You need to buy at least GTX 1050 TI , GTX 1650 or better.
I know that the price of the Nvidia GeForce card is very high, so you can buy Quadro card instead of GEFORCE card.
Nvidia Quadro card performance and price :
Nvidia T400 = GTX 750 TI ($125, gives same performance)
Nvidia T600 = GTX 1050 TI ($200, gives same performance)
Nvidia T1000 = GTX 1650 ($310, gives same performance)
Buy do not build a pc with GTX 550 Ti in 2022.
At least buy a gpu with 4 GB VRAM (GDDR5/ GDDR6).
Thanks for reading :)
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