NVIDIA today took the wraps off of a budget Fermi GPU, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, but our review of Gigabyte's pre-overclocked model found the £130 asking price to be tough to justify.
The card's got potential, though, and we added that pricing of around £100 for a stock-clocked card or £110 for an overclocked model would make a lot of sense. At those figures, GeForce GTX 550 Ti would become a solid mainstream solution with best-in-class performance. And it seems we aren't the only ones seeing it that way - in the hours following the launch, retailers have already snipped a few pounds off the asking price of various cards.
Eyeing up a low-cost upgrade to your ageing GeForce 7600 GT (remember those?), here's a brief look at GTX 550 Ti pricing and availability as of 4:30pm today:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti (1,024MB) |
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|---|---|---|---|
| retailer | product | availability | price |
 |
Palit GTX 550 Ti 1GB | In stock | £112.26* |
| MSI GTX 550 Ti OC 1GB | Pre-order | £115.80* | |
| KFA2 GTX 550 Ti 1GB | In stock | £115.86* | |
| EVGA GTX 550 Ti FPB 1GB | In stock | £119.46* | |
| Zotac GTX 550 Ti 1GB | In stock | £120.66* | |
| Gainward GTX 550 Ti 1GB | In stock | £124.26* | |
| MSI GTX 550 Ti Cyclone II OC 1GB | Pre-order | £125.46* | |
| Zotac GTX 550 Ti AMP 1GB | In stock | £129.06* | |
| ASUS GTX 550 Ti DirectCU 1GB | Pre-order | £130.09* | |
| PNY GTX 550 Ti 1GB | Pre-order | £132.66* | |
| Gigabyte GTX 550 Ti OC 1GB | Pre-order | £132.66* | |
| ASUS GTX 550 Ti DirectCU TOP 1GB | Pre-order | £138.66* | |
| KFA2 GTX 550 Ti White Edition LTD OC 1GB | Pre-order | £149.14* | |
| ebuyer.com | Palit GTX 550 Ti 1GB | In stock | £111.99 |
| Inno3D GTX 550 Ti 1GB | Pre-order | £114.10 | |
| Zotac GTX 550 Ti 1GB | Pre-order | £120.29 | |
| Gainward GTX 550 Ti 1GB | Pre-order | £128.20 | |
| ASUS GTX 550 Ti DirectCU 1GB | Pre-order | £128.51 | |
| Gigabyte GTX 550 Ti OC 1GB | Pre-order | £129.99 | |
| Zotac GTX 550 Ti AMP 1GB | Pre-order | £130.37 | |
| dabs.com | KFA2 GTX 550 Ti 1GB | Pre-order | £114.99 |
| Gainward GTX 550 Ti 1GB | Pre-order | £119.98 | |
| Zotac GTX 550 Ti 1GB | Pre-order | £119.98 | |
| PNY GTX 550 Ti 1GB | Pre-order | £124.99 | |
| Gigabyte GTX 550 Ti OC 1GB | Pre-order | £124.99 | |
| Zotac GTX 550 Ti AMP 1GB | Pre-order | £129.99 | |
| ASUS GTX 550 Ti DirectCU 1GB | In stock | £129.99 | |
| ASUS GTX 550 Ti DirectCU TOP 1GB | In stock | £139.99 | |
| KFA2 GTX 550 Ti White Edition LTD OC 1GB | Pre-order | £139.99 | |
*As always, UK-based HEXUS.community forum members will benefit from the SCAN2HEXUS Free Shipping initiative, which will save you a further few pounds plus also top-notch, priority customer service and technical support backed up by the SCANcare@HEXUSforum. |
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Talk about price disparity. At the time of writing, the cost of owning an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti ranges from around £110 to £150.
At the lower end of that bracket, a stock-clocked card from PNY is available priced at £112 from both Scan.co.uk and Ebuyer.com, but the MSI GTX 550 Ti OC - overclocked to 950MHz on the core (up from 900MHz) and 4,300MHz for memory (up from 4,100MHz) - is arguably the pick of the bunch at a pre-order price of £115.80 from Scan.
We'd still opt to pay a little extra for the added performance of a GeForce GTX 460 or Radeon HD 6850, but the competitive pricing of those two award winners is having a positive effect; GTX 550 Ti is quickly moving closer to the magic £100 mark.
