MSI GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB Cyclone II Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,844 words · ~9 min read
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This video marks the launch of a couple of interesting things. So, this is the
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MSI GTX 550Ti or TAI, which is a 1 gig
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brand new video card, brand new GPU from NVIDIA, and it also marks the
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introduction of the Cyclone 2. So, the
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Cyclone cooler was incredibly popular,
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still is incredibly popular on the LA previous generation cards from MSI, but
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it looks like they've made some improvements to it, and they've made enough improvements to call it an
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upgraded Cyclone 2. So, let's find out what's up with the Cyclone 2 once we get
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things opened up. First of all, this is an OC edition card, so that means it is
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factory overclocked. It is ready for 3D Mark 11, which is one way of saying it
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is a DirectX11 card. It's compatible with MSI Afterburner, which is awesome.
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It's overclocking utility for monitoring temps, all that good stuff. It supports
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CUDA, SLI, PhysX, 3D Vision, as well as
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NVIDIA Surround if you run two of them together. It uses MSI's military class
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concept, including solidstate chokes and solid caps for no coil wine and up to 10
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years lifetime. We've also got a 3-year warranty in the USA and Canada. Oh, and
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here's one interesting difference between the Cyclone and the Cyclone 2.
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The propeller blade now allows for up to 20% more air flow.
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Interesting. Yes. Okay. What do we got in here? Okay. More of the same
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stuff, right? Oh, here's some specs on the Cyclone 2. Here we go. So, 9 cm PWM
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fan up to 40% more air flow to cool down the GPU memory and power modules all at
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once. Multiple heat pipes. So, it has it looks like two heat pipes through the uh
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window there, though it's hard to say yet. Hybrid heat sink design. So, it
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combines aluminum extrusion, heat pipes, and fins for maximum cooling.
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Nickelplated copper base rounded design.
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Okay. Oh, prevents dust accumulation. Okay, I did not know that. Ultimate low
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noise. Yes, that I knew. The cyclones of the our original Cyclone was a very very
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uh low noise cooler. And propeller blade. So that provides up to 20% more
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air flow versus a traditional design. It's based on the same thermal mode with
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the same RPM. Interesting. Okay, so let's go ahead and get this box opened
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up. Don't see anything particularly fascinating on the back. Uh see, it's a
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PCI Express 16X card. It requires a
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minimum 400 watt greater system power supply with a minimum 12vt current
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rating of 24 amps. And everything else on there is fairly
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irrelevant. Yeah. All right. This is an interesting way of
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packing the card. I don't know if this is a retail card, just so you guys know.
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So, I I'm not quite sure if the retail cards will come like this. This is a uh
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a tech tips card, but there you go. It is. Well, you know what? Look, okay,
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let's not fault them for their methods. Let's let's evaluate based on what was
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the objective and did they achieve it. The objective was keep the card in place
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and protect it during shipping and they did achieve it, however inelegantly. All
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right, let's look at the accessories. We've got a two Molex to single six pin
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PCIe power adapter. We've got one of them little mini HDMI to full size HDMI
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adapters. That could be useful as very few TVs have a native mini HDMI cable.
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We've got a DVI to VGA adapter, which by the way, I know I'm always knocking the
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DVI to VGA adapter, but for this particular card, very appropriate
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because you may have an older VGA monitor that you would want to run off
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this card because it's low res and this
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card is going to be optimized for 1680x
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1050 or below. That's the kind of price point that this card exists in. So, hold
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on. Let's see if we got anything else down here. Yes, we do. MSI hides their
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driver CD since they know that you should probably not use it. You should
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throw it away and download the latest off the NVIDIA website. And we've also
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got a little guide for something. Yeah.
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Okay. And then a quick users guide which basically shows you how to install a
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PCIe card. But if you watch Linus Tech Tips, then you probably already know
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that because I have covered that in the past. All right. So, what I'm going to
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do is I'm just going to flip this over and that'll make a nice little platform
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for my card. and let's get the 560 TI or
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TI onto the platform so we can check it
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out. All right, so the first thing the most noticeable thing about this about
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this new Cyclone 2 cooler to me is that
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they've added like a little like blade style shroudy thing on it. So each one
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of these actually kind of looks like the like the blade of a curved sword or
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something like that. And I think that's the effect they're going for cuz they got like these little uh these little
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jaggy things here, right there, which would be pretty nasty if you were
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cutting someone open with them. So that's uh it's a very aggressive look to
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the cooler itself. The overall design of it looks fairly similar to the original
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Cyclone and in that it has the uh the normal flower heat sink here. It's got
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the heat pipes and then those heat pipes are used to carry heat out to this nice
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dense fin array. So, what that means is we're not wasting any of the cooling
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capacity of this fan. So, the any air
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that's blown downward is going to be cooling the GPU through the aluminum
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fins here. And any air that is blown out to the side is going to be cooling the
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GPU because the heat pipes are going to be carrying the heat up to these fins.
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And then it can carry the heat out this way, out this way, and in every which
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way. MSI over the reference design has
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also added a couple other things. They've actually got a heat sink here on
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the voltage regulators. And you're going to see that that's going to get a ton of
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air flow from this fan. When it spins, it'll just be blowing over those heat
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sinks. I don't think we'll have to worry about those running warm at all. And
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they've also added a little stiffening plate. So, this is interesting. You can
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see right here, a little MSI branded plate. And it looks like what that's for
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is just to hold the PCB rigid when you've got it installed in your case
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because it's not really connected to anything else. And that's something that
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I've really felt should be included with
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more graphics cards.
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Sorry. Especially as they start to get heavier and
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heavier. All right, let's start taking off these little protective covers.
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off the DVI port. It's off the SLI connector, off the mini HDMI. There we
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go. Okay. So, another thing I wanted to point out about this card right here is
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that you can see that some of the pins on the PCI Express connector appear to
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be missing. This is by design. This is not a defect in your card. These are
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unnecessary for performance and bandwidth, and NVIDIA has deemed them to
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be perfectly fine to remove. The card is
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still PCI Express compliant, so you don't have to worry about any motherboard compatibility issues or
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anything like that. The Cyclone 2 fan is
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actually a four pin PWM controlled fan. And uh I don't know what the noise
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characteristics of it are like, but if it's anything like the old one, it's probably a pretty pretty
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dec. Here we've got a six pin PCI Express power connector. That's all
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we're going to need as far as external power goes for the GTX 550 TI or TI. On
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the back of the card, we actually see one of the cooler innovations that
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NVIDIA has brought about with the GTX 550 TI. They've actually given their
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board partners the capability of mixing
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and matching different capacities of memory on the card. So, I'm not sure
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which ones are which, but my guess would be that these four are all totaling up
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to uh 512 megs and these two together
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are 512 megs to give us our 1 gig capacity. Because the 550 Tai has a
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192bit memory interface, which is significantly more than any other
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previous generation card in this price bracket, but it only has six memory
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modules. So, how does it have a 1 gig capacity, which would imply that it
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would have to have either four or eight memory modules? Well, it's because
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they're mixing and matching the capacities to give us that extra
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bandwidth, but also that extra that nice
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round even capacity. So, that's a pretty neat thing that NVIDIA has brought about
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on this generation of cards. Here at the back, we find something we're pretty
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used to seeing on MSI cards and NVIDIA cards in general. We've got two DVI
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ports, one HDM, one mini HDMI port. And these, only two of these three can be
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used at any given time. If you do run two 550 ties, you can run three monitors
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off of the two cards together. But for an individual card, you're either using
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DVI DVI, DVI Mini HDMI, or DVI Mini
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HDMI. We've also got our typical MSI branded exhaust port here. Although with
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Cyclone cooler, not a whole lot of the exhaust is going to be going to the
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outside of the case anyhow due to the design of the cooler. The 550 is a
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fairly um low power consumption, low
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heat out heat output card though, so I wouldn't worry too much about the
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overall case temperatures being affected by having the exhaust going out into
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your case. The SLI connector is up
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here. And as you can see, there's only one of
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them. So, that's going to support two-way SLI, but not 3-way or 4-way SLI.
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I mean, really, honestly, those features would be pretty unnecessary on a card at
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this price point. Anyway, so, thank you for checking out my unboxing and first
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look at the GeForce GTX 550 Ti from MSI
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featuring the Cyclone 2 cooler. Don't
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forget to subscribe for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.