Gigabyte GeForce GTX 550 Ti OC Graphics Card Review

A Closer Look
nVidia released the GTX 550 GPU in the knowledge that it had a large overclocking headroom which allowed manufacturers to have a play with clock speeds and custom coolers which has promoted a healthy competition among the manufacturers for performace, cooling and price. GIGABYTE has bumped up the core clock from 900MHz to a much more impressive 970MHz and also increased the VRAM to 4,200MHz from 4,104MHz effective.

In addition, we can immediately see that GIGABYTE has enhanced the cooling by adding a massive 10cm fan to a large flower-style cooler. This cooler is designed to run cool and quiet, and judging by GIGABYTE’s experience with GPU coolers such as their Windforce series, it should be good!

We can also see the standard SLI connector for two-way SLI as well as the standard IO at the rear consisting of 2xDVI ports and a Mini HDMI port. SLI is a very useful solution for these cards considering their price. Although I would always recommend going for a more powerful card than buying two in SLI, it opens up an upgrade path for those who install a single card initially and will bring a considerable amount of performance.