As noted, the card is based on Nvidia's GF116 GPU with 192 CUDA cores and it looks like there will be no reference card. Namely, partners are free to come up with their own designs from day one, which means that we will surely see a lot of factory overclocked cards.
Most cards will be paired up with 1GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 192-bit memory interface and clocked at around 4100MHz. The GPU ended up clocked at 900MHz on most cards while those 192 CUDA cores tick at 1800MHz. Of course, some factory overclocked cards will go as high as 1GHz for the GPU and 4400MHz for memory.
Most of these will use the same output configuration with two DVIs and one mini-HDMI output, but you can expect some other output configurations depending on partner choice as well. Although Nvidia intends to pit the GTX 550 Ti against the HD 5770, we must say that HD 6850 should be considered a more adequate foe, considering that these two come at a similar price.
Both HD 5770 and HD 6850 have been on the market for quite some time, and although the GTX 550 Ti might be ahead performance wise, the HD 5770 sells at around €100. As far as we can see on our favourite price search engine, AMD made a nice price adjustment for the HD 6850 as of this month so you might want to check it out as well here. Also bear in mind that AMD might have a bit more room for additional price adjustment.
Most reviews agree that the card is a decent performer on screens that run games at 1680x1050 resolutions, but it ends up slower than the GTX 460 768MB that is actually cheaper. Of course, we are pretty sure that the GTX 460 will mysteriously disappear from the market. The competition is quite fierce in this part of the market and we believe that AMD already won this round.
You can find some of the reviews below and ours should be up pretty soon.
- Fudzilla- Gainward GTX 550Ti GS
- Anandtech
- TechPowerUp - Palit, Zotac, MSI
- NeoSeeker
- Hexus
- HotHardware
- OverClockersClub
