NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 550 Ti: Coming Up Short At $150
by Ryan Smith on March 15, 2011 9:00 AM ESTClosing Thoughts
This is ultimately an underwhelming launch for NVIDIA, but perhaps it’s best we first start with the positives.
The GTS 450 was the first Fermi launch that didn't result in some immediate fanfare for NVIDIA. With performance treading between a Radeon HD 5750 and 5770, the GTS 450 didn’t look good. So if they could be a “most improved” award for a GPU, GF116 and the GTX 550 Ti would most certainly get it. Even though all NVIDIA did was enable a 3rd memory controller and ramp up the clocks, it’s enough to increase performance by 20% - at other segments of the market we regularly settle for less. With these improvements the GTX 550 Ti is finally almost consistently ahead of the Radeon HD 5770.
So what’s the problem? The same problem NVIDIA normally runs in to: pricing. The GTX 550 Ti seems destined to sell based on NVIDIA’s name and market presence more than it will sell based on performance characteristics. Not having a reference card muddles our results some, but ultimately it’s clear that AMD’s pricing has caught NVIDIA flat-footed.
Indeed the GTX 550 Ti is faster than the 5770 - by around 7% - but then the GTX 550 Ti costs 36% more. At the other end of the spectrum is the 6850, which is 7% more expensive on average for 25% better performance. Even the GTX 460 768MB is going to gnaw at NVIDIA here so long as it’s still on the market; it’s 15% faster and yet it’s $20 cheaper. It’s with a dash of Alanis Morissette irony that while having so-so graphical performance the GTX 550 is a remarkable compute card compared to similar AMD cards, but at the same time a CUDA memory bug sliped by before the product shipped.
In these situations NVIDIA reminds me of Intel in the sub-$200 market before Sandy Bridge was released: gross margin first, competition second. AMD is quite willing to cut prices to the bone, NVIDIA is not. As a result on these lower-end products AMD has quite the performance lead for the price. This of course is NVIDIA’s choice, but so long as they choose to go about pricing products this way they’re going to play catch-up to AMD.
In the end the GTX 550 Ti just isn’t a compelling product at $149. At that price you’re much better served by ponying up the extra $10 to pick up a 6850 for much better performance – and if the Zotac GTX 550 Ti AMP is similar to other GTX 550 Ti cards – lower power consumption and less noise. Alternatively the GTX 460 768MB is an absolute steal while it’s still available.
Meanwhile partners like Zotac are left in a rough spot. At $169 $155 the GTX 550 Ti AMP closes the performance gap with the 6850 by some, and at $5 more than a stock clocked GTX 550 Ti is quite a good deal for 10% better performance. But ultimately it's only $5 less than a notably better performing card, the 6850. However the fact that so many partners are doing overclocked cards speaks well of GF116’s overclockability. More significantly it’s quite remarkable that these overclocked GTX 550 Ti’s can get so close to the GTX 460 768MB – a card with a much bigger GPU with many more functional units to work with. With these factory overclocks, the GTX 550 Ti could almost be a decent replacement for the GTX 460 768MB. Pricing is the enemy however – these guys can only lower prices if NVIDIA lets up on the $149 MSRP for the stock clocked GTX 550 Ti.
Finally, we certainly haven’t forgotten about NVIDIA’s interesting memory arrangement with the GTX 550 Ti. It’s a shame that they won’t tell us more about how they’re interleaving memory accesses on this unique design, but hopefully they’ll open up in the future. It’s something we’re definitely going to revisit once the CUDA memory bug is dealt with, and hopefully at that time we’ll be able to learn more about how NVIDIA is accomplishing this. If this is the start of a long term change to memory layout by NVIDIA, then getting to better understand how they’re interleaving memory accesses here will be all the more important to understanding future products.
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HangFire - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
Advertisers hate it when you see how competitive older offerings are with new stuff. So, little-used features like in DirectX 11 are used to force out comparisons with older cards that still deliver great frame rates and value, and cause users to not upgrade for a while.We won this battle for a while and AT had a few older cards it included in its benchmarks. Now its back to nothing but the latest.
morphologia - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
"Nothing but the latest?" The 4870 and 4870X2 shown in this comparison are hardly current. I suppose the 4870 is less likely to outperform than the 4890 is, but the X2 makes an even stronger showing. Still does not make sense.Also, on an unrelated note, it looked like the 6990 was dropping out of various comparison scales without explanation. BattleForge 1680x1050, for example. 6990 dominated the 1920x1200 but was inexplicably absent from 1680x1050, instead the 580 topped that chart. What's up with that??
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
The 6990 is not on any of the 1680 benchmarks. It's already CPU limited at 1920; at 1680 it's useless data since no one is going to use it at that resolution.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
Due to the amount of time it takes to benchmark (and rebenchmark) GPUs, it's necessary to keep a truncated list, and from there not every card actually makes it in to the article (and this is why we have GPU Bench). As such I focus on the current and previous generation of GPUs, while throwing in a sampling of 3rd & 4th generation GPUs as a baseline.I specifically pick these older GPUs based on architecture and relative performance - the idea being that while we don't have every GPU in the system, if it's a few years old it's well established how other minor variations of that GPU perform relative to the one in our results database. So in this case the 4870 is in there both because it's easy to visualize where the 4850/4890 would be relative to it, and because it was easily the most popular 4800 card.
morphologia - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
Seems like the 4870X2 was a bit of a spoiler, seeing as how it trumped a few of even the current generation, though it too was dropping in and out of the bar charts with no explanation. If you are going to include it at all, there should be more consistency. Otherwise it looks like ranking/stat doctoring.7Enigma - Thursday, March 17, 2011 - link
Ryan's already mentioned why. It's a dual GPU card at the time was likely not tested at the low resolutions this particular article used for these lower-end cards. Likely 1920X1200 (or 1080) was the lowest this card was benchmarked at. I applaud Anandtech for including the data they have, and as mentioned you can use Bench to compare to your hearts desire. Bottom line: it is unlikely someone is gaming at less than 24" resolutions with a 4870X2, and if they are they can use Bench for that particular purpose.These guys have enough to do without going back and retesting cards from years ago. I'm just glad the data is in there.
nwarawa - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
I didn't hear much complaining about the GTX460 768MB all this time : all the reviews were heralding its value. Now we have an even less powerful GPU, and 768MB suddenly becomes an issue? The heck with that. 768MB should be the standard configuration for this card, with a MSRP of $129. If you want high resolutions with AA, you should be getting a more powerful GPU as well. Nvidia should use a 768MB model of the GTX550 to phase out the 768MB GTX460, keep the 1GB GTX460 for awhile, and encourage more brands to bin their GTX560Ti's and make some 2GB models (I know Palit/Gainward does one, but no availability where I live). An overclocked 2GB GTX560Ti would be handy in a handful of games (GTA4 immediately comes to mind), and would compete well with a 6950... leaving the GTX570 to dance with the 6970, and the GTX580 to maintain its single-chip lead.HangFire - Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - link
768MB did not suddenly become an issue. Previous AT articles on the two 460's have repeated warnings that 768MB would soon be not enough memory.Agreed that if you lower the price enough, 768MB becomes "enough" as you are unlikely to be driving high resolutions with the corresponding large numbers of in-memory high resolution textures with a low-end card. At moderate resolutions, 768MB is enough.
Belard - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
(AMD - you still suck for naming the SLOWER 6870 cards to replace the 5870s etc)LOL - this would be FUNNY if it wasn't so sad.
1 - The "State of the art" 550 Ti (Total idiot) card is 0~5% faster than the the 1+ year old ATI 5770. Really, other than for reference - 1280x1024 scores are useless for todays monitors. $120~140 means buying a 20" 1920x1080 monitor, $160~200 is a 21~22" model. I'm missing the 1920x1200 since its not so bloody narrow. I'd love to see a 26~27" that does 2560 x 1600 on the market.
So when comparing the results for 1920x1080, which is a STANDARD for today. The 550 is sometimes 0~3 fps faster, sometimes slower.
2 - Price!? The 5770 is easily 1/3rd cheaper going for $100~125 vs, $150~160.
3 - Stupid model names!? GeForce was given to the series. So WTF is GFX good for? If the 550 is almost the bottom end... why not GTS like the GTS 450 or GTS 250? There is no consistency. It doesn't donate feature sets.
"TI" okay... What is the difference between a TI and a NON TI card? Oh yeah, the letters on the box and in bios, nothing else. Why bother?
We know Nivdia will most likely skip the 600 series (What happened to the 300s?) so they too can be "7s" with ATI. So well we see:
Nvidia GeForce GT 720 mx
Nvidia Geforce GTS 740 Pro
Nvidia Geforce GTX 780 Ultra
The Geforce 550 or "GF550" is ALL we need to know what the product is.
4 - ATI 6850... it should have been included in this benchmark since its in the same price range. Newegg as them for $150~180 ($160 avg). It would really show what people are paying for. The 6850 is about 10fps faster than the 5770/GF550
5 - GF 460-768 price is $130~160.. again, about 10fps faster than the GF550. But oh yeah, the 550 replaces the older and faster card. hate it when that hapens!
Think I'll hold on to my ATI 4670 until the AMD 7670/7770 comes out... I want the performance of a 5870/6950 with the heat/noise and power issues of a 5770 at a price under $180.
phoible_123 - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
I find it kind of interesting that nVidia's price points for their mid-range cards are higher this time around.The GTX460 started at $220 IIRC (and had its price cut pretty quickly), while the GTX560 is $259. The price for the 460 was pretty killer, but by the time the 560 came out, the pricing was pretty ho hum. If they had launched it at the same price level as the 460, AMD wouldn't have been able to compete. Granted, I'm sure they priced it that way to keep margins high, but this is a process improvement rather than an all-new chip (basically it's the third-gen gf100)...
The GTS450 was $130, while the GTX550 "TI" is $150. And when the GTS450 came out, the value prop wasn't that good (when compared to the 460). It's like half the card for only a little less money.
I recently picked up a GTX460 768MB for $90 after rebates.
It's kind of like the radeon 48xx vs 57xx comparison (less card for more money).