The GTX 550 Ti is positioned in a very price sensitive segment of the market, as is the case with all sub $200 graphics cards. This is because casual and mainstream gamers alike tend to look for the best performing product at the lowest price point possible. Also, graphics cards in this segment tend to have a four year upgrade cycle, which makes long term performance extremely important. When taking these into consideration, the GTX 550 Ti is a very impressive graphics card, as it gives gamers a performance increase over previous generation’s mainstream graphic cards, yet it also has increased memory bandwidth, which could potentially allow this card to be used for years before becoming obsolete. As shown in our testing, the 550 Ti also scales very well in SLI, so even if a system using this card started to stutter in games, a second card could easily be added for additional performance.

The two cards we looked at in this review both have increased performance in comparison to the reference models, as both the Palit and MSI GTX 550 Ti models have higher clock speeds. This translates into better performance across the board, further increasing the price-to-performance ratio of the 550 Ti. In addition, both the graphics cards we looked at operated at a near silent level, even when the fan speed setting was increased. So while you get improved performance, both the MSI and Palit models also offer outstanding acoustics via their custom thermal solutions.

Another aspect where both the Palit and MSI graphics cards really stood out was in overclocking, with each having their own strong points. The MSI board had better overclocking potential when it came to increasing the GPU clock speed, as it was able to surpass 1100MHz which gave it a 14% increase over the factory setting. The Palit card on the other hand was able to increase the memory further than the MSI version and just came up a bit shy of reaching a 1025MHz (5000MHz effective) memory clock speed. Even while the GTX 550 Ti graphics cards already have high clocks speeds, there is room to push them even further for added performance.

The GTX 550 Ti is also a nice introductory graphics card for gamers looking to take advantage of features such as PhysX, 3D vision and 3D Surround (two graphics cards are required for 3D Vision). All of these features add to the gaming experience, however a little more horsepower might be needed to utilize these technologies at their full potential. The 550 Ti should have no issues running them in games at lower resolutions though.

All of these factors make the GTX 550 Ti an excellent solution for gamers looking for a decent level of performance for a low premium. However, the mainstream market is extremely competitive and higher performance graphics cards can be found for as little as $20 more than the GTX 550 Ti. This could make it hard for the GTX 550 Ti to stand out as mainstream market is currently crowded with DX11 graphics cards from the likes of both AMD and Nvidia. The GTX 550 Ti is being released into a very competitive market, but it has performance, features and great SLI scaling backing it. In addition, Nvida's AIB partners such as Palit and MSI are releasing their graphics cards with increased clock speeds, which makes either of the models reviewed today a great choice for gamers looking for a great out-of-the-box experience.