NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti Roundup: ASUS, EVGA, Gigabyte & MSI

In our initial GTX 550 Ti review, we alluded to the fact that we would soon have a roundup live in order to better showcase the lay of the land in the retail market. Well, that’s exactly what we will be doing here with no fewer than four cards from four different board partners being featured.

When taken at face value, the reference GTX 550 Ti 1GB really isn’t anything to get too excited about even though it does bring forth some unique technologies which could very well filter down to many future NVIDIA cards. But the board partners set out to rectify this situation by releasing a long list of pre overclocked and altogether custom cards that push the GF116 in new directions. Some don’t even come with an associated price premium over the MSRP.


ASUS and EVGA get things started with cards from opposite ends of the spectrum. The ASUS Ultimate Edition is an unassuming card that is saddled with a drool-worthy core clock that’s in excess of 1Ghz but comes with a $20 price premium over the reference version. Meanwhile, EVGA’s GTX 550 FPB takes a bit more mundane approach with slightly increased clock speeds but doesn’t deviate from NVIDIA’s MSRP of $149.

Perennial competitors Gigabyte and MSI have both sent cards which feature similar pre-overclocked clock speeds along with custom designs and are only priced a few bucks over the reference price. It will likely be a race that’s too close to call between these two but from where we’re standing, it’s hard to imagine where either could go wrong.

Considering the clock speeds and feature sets these four cards come with, this roundup should give you a good cross section of the GTX 550 Ti product stack. All in all, it should be interesting to see how NVIDIA’s board partners have risen to the challenge of breathing life into a new GPU.