And One More Thing – Adobe Premiere Pro CS5
We introduced this benchmark in our original look at the GTX 460 768MB and carried it with us to the GTS 450 GPU review. The reason why we’ve done this is because of the new rendering engine inside Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 called the Mercury Playback Engine.
The list of supported GPUs is very small and only a handful of cards plus nVidia’s workstation Quadro line are supported. With a small hack, you can unlock hardware acceleration on most 1GB or higher nVidia GPUs. The best part is that Adobe does not plan to disable this hack and wants to see what the community does with it. Here’s what we found out about the GTX 550 Ti and the Mercury Playback Engine today.
The GTX 550 Ti has clearly shown that it is the next card to own if you are a video editor using Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 on a PC. After looking at the results of this test, it does seem pretty clear that the near GHz core clock of the GTX 550 Ti really makes a difference to a lot of apps. More so than the number of CUDA cores onboard.
GPU Temperatures
The Cyclone II isn’t a pretty cooler, but it does do a much better job than its predecessor, besting it by as much as 7C under load. The HD 6850 is like a fireball topping out at 80C and idling at over 47C. One wonders how much better it would do with a Cyclone II attached.
Noise Levels
The new Cyclone II cooler is quieter than the Cyclone I strapped to the GTX 460 768MB by a bit at idle, but when it comes time to kick it up for performance, the opposite is true. However, given the cooling performance observed above, it’s definitely a reasonable trade off and in all honesty, it’s not a cooler you will here over the drone of the rest of your components.
Power Consumption
nVidia really worked hard to bring this card into a power envelope that would make it a logical upgrade for many users that bought those pre-built boxes from any number of manufacturers. With a minimum power supply requirement of only 400 Watts, there shouldn’t be any need to upgrade to power this card. It has a reasonable peak power of 258Watts with our system setup and is only bested by the HD 6850 which requires two PCI-E 6 pin connectors while the N550GTX-Ti only needs one.
Final Thoughts
I’m going to keep this short because the test results speak for themselves. This card would be very easy to recommend if there were no GTX 460 768MB cards out there. For gaming, the GTX 550 Ti’s slightly older brother is a far better buy at around $15 US less. You must also consider that if you play games that favour AMD GPUs, the HD 6850 is only a few dollars more at retail. Having said that, if your system has an older PSU or one that is slightly underpowered, you might have to buy a new one to run the GTX 460 768MB while you could squeak by with the GTX 550 Ti. It’s a reasonable way to upgrade a budget pre-built box with a weaker PSU when the money is tight. And if you are seeking a sub $200 GPU that speeds up your rendering performance in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, then there is no doubt this is the card for you.
As far as MSI’s contribution goes, the N550GTX-Ti Cyclone II 1GB5 OC Edition really is a great card on its own. At $154.99 US you get good cooling, the awesome Afterburner software, and a 3 year North American warranty. The military class components onboard toughen it up and make it last too and you might even get some free games with a lot of the current offers out there. But, it’s really too bad that the GTX 460 768MB is still in the pipeline and this GPU isn’t cheaper. But on balance, I can confidently recommend it if you are a buyer fits into the N550GTX-Ti’s many strengths.
Pros
- Great GPU upgrade for pre-built systems with weak PSUs
- Respectable 3D Gaming Performance
- The best value Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 GPU to date (Under $200)
- Excellent cooling via Cyclone II GPU Cooler
Cons
- Betrayed by its better performing (and cheaper) GTX 460 768MB brother (for overall 3D Gaming)
Overall Rating: 8.0 / 10.0
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