14 DAY TRIAL // Already a bunch of mainstream NVIDIA-powered video cards have been detailed, and it seems that Micro-Star International wants to stand out at least as much as the next company, so it prepared two models, one with stock clocks and one with factory overclocking.
NVIDIA may not have brought out the GeForce GTX 590, its dual-GPU card set to battle AMD's Radeon HD 6990.
On the other hand, what it did deliver, along with its partners, is the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, its newest, mainstream-level adapter based on the GF116 GPU (graphics processing unit).
Galaxy and Zotac, among others, have already made official introductions of their respective adapters based on the Santa Clara, California-based company's reference design.
Now, Micro-Star International stepped up to show its own modifications, so it presented two boards equipped with the Cyclone II dual-slot cooler.
Both cards have 192 CUDA cores each, 1 GB of GDDR5 VRAM, a memory interface of 192 bits and the same connectivity capabilities (dual-DVI and mini HDMI).
That said, the main distinctive features are the clock speeds. One board sticks to the stock specifications, those being 900 MHz, 1,800 MHz and 4,100 MHz for the GPU, shaders and memory.
The other adapter has the GPU running at 950 MHz, the shaders at 1,900 MHz and, finally, the VRAM operating at 4,300 MHz.
As for the cooler itself, it uses two copper heatpipes and a nickel-plated copper base, plus a 90mm PWM fan.
This should drive temperatures 23 degrees Celsius lower than normal while producing up to 50% less noise. This, coupled with MSI signature Military Class Concept components (Solid State Chokes, Solid Capacitors) should make the cards quite appealing, especially with the price, for the overclocked N550GTX-Ti Cyclone at least, being of $155.
What remains to be seen is how the pair fares against all the others of their kind, as well as AMD's 6000 series.