This was my 2nd attempt at purchasing a Good Video Card for my son's "Excalibur" Desktop that I had just finished building for him for his games, video & Picturing editing, and of course his academic pursuits. The 1st Video Card I brought for my son's Excalibur Rig (A
GIGABYTE Radeon HD 6450 1GB DDR3 DVI-I / D-Sub / HDMI Low Profile Graphics Card, GV-R645OC-1GI ) while did well with the 2nd and 3rd requirements the card fell short in the 1st requirement for his games, especially with video intensive games like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed which would show seriously lagging durring the more intense action parts of the game. Plus the Windows 7 Index score was almost the same as my wifes ATI 4650HD Video Card in her Desktop which was 5.0 for Windows Aero and 6.3 (out of a possible 7.9) for Gaming Graphics.
So I did some heavy research and decided to look at the EVGA Cards (with the Nvidia chipsets)on what I heard about from thier reputation and see if I could find a serious Gaming Video Card without necessarily breaking the bank. So after looking at the different EVGA Cards between the $100 to $200 dollar range I finally decided to go with this model EVGA Card on the merits of the reviews (which were just over 4 and 1/2 stars at the time of purchase) and made the plung hoping I would not regret it (Like I did with the 1st Video Card)and it turns out I didn't.
While the installation was fairly easy and without incident please be advised of the following...
1. This is no small card, you will need to 2 available pci/pci-e slots available in your tower (Just 1 pci-e 16x slot to plug it in).
2. You need at least a regular size ATX compatible tower (or preferably bigger) to fit this sucker in, No low profile option for this baby. The card measures at Height: 4.376in - 111.15mm by Length: 8.25in - 210mm.
*** Updated 09/24/2012 ***
This card may fit in some Mid ATX Towers, one person commented to me he was able to get this card to fit in his Micro ATX Case, before doing this I would still advise measuring the inside of your Case before purchase (See card measurements above).
3. The Minium power supply required by EVGA is a 400W power supply, I would not go any lower than 500W (My son's PS is 750W Antec Green)
4. Comes with the EVGA Driver/Software Disc with EVGA Precision Tuning Utility (I just downloaded the current drivers from the Nvidia Website), Installtion Booklets, DVI to VGA adapter, and a 6 pin PCI-E Power Cable(My PS had a 6 pin connector available). Insure to plug this in or your Video Card will not work.
5. You will need to either purchase a HDMI to Mini HDMI Connector (
Gold Plated HDMI to HDMI Mini cable, 2 M / 6.56 FT) or DVI Cable (
Eforcity Black 6 FT / 2 Meter DVI-D M/M Digital /Digital Dual Link Cable for ... seperatly (Go for the HDMI for best picture quality).
6. This card will only display up to 2 monitors unless you brought a second one of these cards (Of course you would need a second PCI-E Slot in your Mother board) or buy one that is specifically made for multiview (more than 2 displays).
All I can say once I installed the Nvidia Drivers was OMG, simple stuff like surfing the internet and moving through the desktop was pure joy. The Windows 7 experience Index was 7.3 for both Windows Aero and gaming grapics (Out of a possible 7.9) All the high resource end games me and my son threw at it not only played great but looked way better than ever before. Here are the following games we tried on it on full 1920 X 1080 with all other Video options set on the highest settings...
High End Resorce Games:
BattleField 3
Star Wars The Force Unleashed - Sith Edition
Star Wars The Force Unleashed 2
Spiderman 3 (Movie tie-in game)
Older End Games:
Battlefield 2
Again, all the games moved swiftly with no lag. No devation from the graphic frame. Both me and my son were stoked. Some of the reviewers complianed that the card made noise but it has been as quiet as a church mouse since installed.
While this card did not cost me say like some of even the higher end cards (These baby's can go anywhere from starting at $250 to $900) it did cost me about 3 times as much as the 1st Video Card (which was about $55, you get what you pay for) at about 170 bones, in the end it was worth it.
Make sure that you register the card at EVGA's website to take full advantage of the 3 year limited warranty.
Overall, An excellent card and look forward to playing some of these games myself. If you are looking for a high end gamers card or a Graphics design Card without necessarily breaking the bank then look no further.
System Specs: My Sons Desktop
Intel Core Dou 2 Quad 2.66ghz socket 775, 6mb cache processor
Intel DP43TF MOBO
8GB of DDR2 800mhz PC6400 RAM
750W Antec PSU
750GB SATA HDD
24bit 5.1 Creative Sound Card
1GB intergrated Intel NIC
EVGA Geforce GTX550Ti 2GB GDDR5 PCI-E (Formely AMD/ATI Radeon HD 6450 PCI-E 1GB) Video Card
Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (64 Bit)
27inch LCD VE276Q ASUS Monitor.