Introduction

The mid-range market is really heating up and one of the best things about these mid-range cards is that companies get the chance to attack the models instantly unlike higher end models such as the new Dual GPU offerings from both NVIDIA and AMD.

The latest mid-range card to greet us comes from ASUS and is part of the new NVIDIA GTX 550 Ti series. The model we're looking at today is part of both the DirectCU and TOP series and carries with it both a healthy overclock and upgraded cooling system.

Before we look at the cooling solution that ASUS is offering us today along with the out of the box clocks, we'll first check out the package. Once we've done that we'll look at the card and then get into the performance side of things to see just what the ASUS GTX 550 Ti DirectCU Top is capable of.

Package

Like most of these mid-range cards we've seen lately, we've got a fairly small bundle; in this case a quick start manual, CD and dual Molex to 6-Pin PCI-E power connector.