# MSI GeForce GTX 550 Ti Cyclone II 1 GB



## W1zzard (Mar 14, 2011)

MSI's new factory overclocked GeForce GTX 550 Ti Cyclone II uses an improved version of MSI's Cyclone cooler which increases air flow without increasing noise. As a result the card's temperatures never exceed 60°C - no matter what you throw at it.

*Show full review*


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## Ghost (Mar 15, 2011)

Other website says this card supports up to three monitors.

Anyway, nice card for a nice price. Awesome cooler.


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## Zubasa (Mar 15, 2011)

Ghost said:


> Other website says this card supports up to three monitors.
> 
> Anyway, nice card for a nice price. Awesome cooler.


Well this card isn't impressive at all for its price.
But this is expected from what is essentially a fully enabled 450 + OC....

I guess for $160 this is an alright card, but the 5830 is slightly cheaper and slight faster in most cases.
This card need to be cheaper still.


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## yogurt_21 (Mar 15, 2011)

Zubasa said:


> Well this card isn't impressive at all for its price.
> But this is expected from what is essentially a fully enabled 450 + OC....
> 
> I guess for $160 this is an alright card, but the 5830 is slightly cheaper and slight faster in most cases.
> This card need to be cheaper still.



from here it looks like the gtx460 768mb beats the 550 in every possible way except for memory amount, something that isn't going to matter at the lower resolutions these cards are aimed for.


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## snuif09 (Mar 15, 2011)

I don't really see this card becoming popular.
There are just better options out there.


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## Zubasa (Mar 15, 2011)

yogurt_21 said:


> from here it looks like the gtx460 768mb beats the 550 in every possible way except for memory amount, something that isn't going to matter at the lower resolutions these cards are aimed for.


Exactly, even the 5830 which is a sub-par card pulls ahead of the 550.
The gap gets wider as the resolution increases, I really don't see the reason for nVidia to went out of their way to make this a 1GB card.


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## yogurt_21 (Mar 15, 2011)

Zubasa said:


> Exactly, even the 5830 which is a sub-par card pulls ahead of the 550.
> The gap gets wider as the resolution increases, I really don't see the reason for nVidia to went out of their way to make this a 1GB card.



nor do I, 768mb should have been plenty. I'm really not seeing a point to this card. doesn't seem like it'd be any cheaper to produce than the 460


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## Zubasa (Mar 15, 2011)

yogurt_21 said:


> nor do I, 768mb should have been plenty. I'm really not seeing a point to this card. doesn't seem like it'd be any cheaper to produce than the 460


There is a very good reason for nVidia to do this.
The core on a 450/550 only contains 1170M transistors compare the the 460/560s 1950M.
That is the 460 core has 66+% more transistors than the 550 core, if both GPU have the same transistor density, the 550 core will be 66% smaller thus much cheaper to make.
Memory on the other hand, is much cheaper nowadays.

What this basically means is that nVidia can now avoid a direct competition against the 5770 which is only a 1040M chip.
The 450 is selling cheaper than a 5770 while more expensive to make. Now the 550 can sell for more than a 5770 to make up for its disadvantage.


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