Legit Video Card Reviews

ASUS Ultimate GeForce GTX 550 Ti Video Card Review

Manufacturer: ASUS
Product: ASUS UL ENGTX550 Ti DC/DI/1GD5
Date: Mon, Mar 21, 2011 - 12:00 PM
Written By: Nathan Kirsch -
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Retail Box and Bundle

ASUS Ultimate GeForce ENGTX 550 Video Card Retail Box Front

The retail box for the ASUS Ultimate GTX550 Ti DirectCU lists the main features that the card comes with and that the card features an extreme overclock of 1015MHz on the core clock.

ASUS Ultimate GeForce ENGTX 550 Video Card Retail Box Back

Turning the retail box over, we see even more marketing text in many different languages and more details on the three main features of this video card.

  • ASUS Exclusive DirectCU Thermal Solution: ASUS uses a cooling fan along with two 8mm flattened copper heat-pipes that directly contact the GPU for 20% lower temperatures than the NVIDIA reference designed GeForce GTX 550 Ti. 
  • Super Alloy Power: ASUS Super Alloy Power blends select elements under an exclusive forumula that results in a 15% performance increase, 2.5 longer product lifespan and 35C cooler operating temperatures. 
  • Voltage Tweak: ASUS Voltage Tweak technology allows you to boost GPU voltages via ASUS SmartDoctor to achieve up to 50% faster clock speeds. Overclocking capability may be varied by different cards and platforms. Extreme cooling is required to achieve 50% faster clock speeds.

ASUS Ultimate GTX550 Ti DirectCU Video Card Retail Bundle

The ASUS Ultimate GTX550 Ti video card bundle included with the UL ENGTX550 DC/DI/1GD5 graphics card includes a quick installation guide, a drivers CD and a 6-pin PCIe to 4-pin molex power adapter.

ASUS GeForce ENGT430 Top Video Card Software

When you fired up the driver CD that comes with the card you'll see this GUI that allows you to check out the user manual and install the drivers and utilities if needed.

ASUS GeForce ENGT430 Top Video Card Software

Taking a closer look at the utility section of the VGA driver disc we can see that it also comes with two utilities that might come in handy.

  • ASUS GamerOSD - Overclock during gameplay
  • ASUS SmartDoctor - Overclocking and Intelligent Hardware Protection Tool

The one that we are highly interested in for this review is the ASUS SmartDoctor utility as that will allow us to adjust the card's voltages and to overclock it to the max!

Next Page - The Test System


Review Index
Page 1 - The ASUS Ultimate GeForce GTX550-Ti
Page 2 - Retail Box and Bundle
Page 3 - The Test System
Page 4 - Aliens vs. Predator
Page 5 - Just Cause 2
Page 6 - Metro 2033
Page 7 - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat
Page 8 - H.A.W.X. 2 Benchmark
Page 9 - 3DMark Vantage
Page 10 - 3DMark 11
Page 11 - Unigine 'Heaven' DX11
Page 12 - FurMark 1.8.2
Page 13 - Temperature Testing
Page 14 - Power Consumption
Page 15 - GeForce GTX 550 Ti Overclocking
Page 16 - Final Thoughts & Conclusions