What MSI have done with the N550GTX-Ti M2D1GD5 is produce a video card that is quick, capable and generally friendly on the pocket. In fact, sticking two or more of these cards in your machine in SLi configuration would not break the bank… nor would it disappoint in terms of performance.

Even when a single one of these cards is used, its performance is good. It performs a bit better than expected from a standard N550GTX chipset, thanks to a bit of tweaking done to the card by MSI. The chipset is fairly fast, and the 1GB of GDDR5 RAM on-board does a lot to help the card deliver a smooth performance.

It has also got a number of bells and whistles to help the user along. First off is the Afterburner software, that MSI ships with all of their VGA cards. This overclocking software makes tweaking the card easy and pretty safe, too. Of course, squeezing more power out of any computer component can have undesirable effects, but the Afterburner package is well put together, and allows for the best options to be easily accessed. It also allows for customisable performance for 2D and 3D modes, meaning that the user can keep temperatures down and even use less power when possible. An advanced fan speed controller will further help to keep the card cool.

Speaking of keeping cool, this card has a rather striking housing built over its large heat sink and single fan configuration. Moving away from the boxy look, the red and black housing, with a few nice curves, looks a bit more mature than the run-of-the-mill graphics card. It is also thankfully devoid of images on luscious maidens in chainmail bikinis, or the like.

The card handles overclocking beautifully too, without heavy spikes in noise or temperature. You can squeeze a lot more out of this card if you tweak it just right, and sunning an SLi configuration will deliver excellent results. As with most PC equipment these days, this VGA card makes use of high grade components – Military Grade is the favoured catch-phrase – including solid capacitors and solid state chokes. These deliver less noise, less heat and a better lifespan. They also won’t explode which, as we have pointed out before, is always a boon inside a PC case.

And all of this comes at a really good price tag. In fact, some buyers may be dissuaded by the price, thinking that it is too low for a high quality product. But, quite honestly, this is one of the best deals we have seen when it comes to graphics cards, and heartily recommend it. It might not deliver true top end performance but, for the most part, you will not be disappointed with what it does.

Verdict:

A good card at a great price.

PROS:

CONS:

• Not the most powerful card around

Buy

You can buy the graphics card at Amazon and other online retailers.

Henry Bridge, Google Chrome product manager, confirmed that “users with old graphics drivers experienced a significant increase in crashes when using these [WebGL and GPU-accelerated HTML5 video] features”.

Google as a consequence has added “ranges of old drivers to Google Chrome’s software rendering list”. This means that users with hardware acceleration compatible hardware cannot use the feature because the drivers they have installed on their systems are outdated and thus blacklisted.

Google recommends that users should use the latest major version of their operating system and install the latest device drivers that are available for the computer.

Recommending the latest major version of the operating system could severely irritate Chrome users who run an older version. Windows XP for instance is still by far the most used version of Windows, and asking XP users to update to Windows 7 to use hardware acceleration in Chrome could convince some to make the easier change to another web browser instead.

The second recommendation, to update device drivers, is recommended by all browser developers. The process is not complicated as long as one knows which hardware is installed on the system and where to download the latest drivers.

The core problem, at least on Windows, is that the operating system does not offer a repository for all drivers, which leaves Windows users with no other choice than to download and install the drivers manually.

The following links lead to websites where the latest device drivers can be downloaded:

• ATI Drivers
• NVIDIA Drivers
• Intel Drivers

Free and commercial driver updating tools are available which can simplify the updating process. Most are however known to produce false positives as well which means that the programs need to be used with caution. We have reviewed some here: Windows Driver Updates.

Hardware acceleration is one of the new core features of modern web browsers, and with that feature comes the necessity to install and run the latest device drivers to avoid the problems that Henry Bridge mentioned in the blog posting.

A rule of thumb is that MSI Afterburner supports most Geforce and Radeon cards providing that the drivers installed are not to old. Try updating the drivers if the video card is not recognized by the software immediately.

MSI Afterburner is based on Rivatuner, another popular video card configuration software. The program displays a hardware monitor and core information about the graphic card on startup.

The core information include the graphics card name and driver version as well as the core voltage, core clock, shader clock, memory clock and fan speed. The availability of these values depends largely on the graphics card itself, if it is supported it should be shown.

msi afterburner software

Sliders are available to change these core parameters directly. The hardware monitor on the right side displays max and min values. These again depend largely on the capabilities of the video card. It is for instance possible to see the graphics card maximum and minimum temperature, fan speed and core clock changes.

Settings can directly be saved in profiles. This is handy for overclocking or underclocking the graphics card in specific situations. It is for example possible to create one standard profile, one overclocked profile for gaming and other gpu intensive tasks and one underclocked profile for situations where the graphics card is not needed at all.

The settings button leads to an extensive configuration menu. Here it is possible to change the behavior of the card’s fan, the hardware monitoring, on-screen display and profiles among other options.

Fan Speed

The fan speed controls can be changed from automatic to user defined. This opens a graph where the fan speed can be adjusted to the temperature of the graphics card. The fan speed could for instance be lowered if the gpu temperature is low and increased if it increases.

fan speed

Hardware Monitoring

Hardware monitoring graphs can be enabled or disabled in this tab. It is furthermore possible to activate hardware monitoring history logging which can be helpful when troubleshooting video card problems.

hardware monitoring

Hotkeys can be assigned to the profiles that have been created to switch easily between them. There is also an option to set automatic 2D and 3D profiles which will then be automatically enabled whenever the system uses 2D and 3D applications (meaning gpu-less and gpu intensive processes).

An onscreen display can be configured in the MSI Afterburner software to display relevant information directly. This – and some other settings – require a server process that needs to be running in the background.

Computer users with multiple gpus can configure the clock, voltage and fan speed individually or in sync.

MSI Afterburner is an interesting tool for users who want to tweak their graphics card. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. Downloads are available directly at the MSI website.

Nhancer is a software for Nvidia graphics cards which offers way more settings than the Nvidia control panel. It provides a global setting which applies to every application that does not have it’s own profile and profiles for individual games and applications.

There are already hundreds of games included in the list and it is also possible to add additional ones that are installed on your computer. Even relative new games like Hellgate London are already included in the list.

The main use of nHancer is the ease of use when changing settings, especially those 3D-related settings of your Nvidia graphics adapter. Gamers who like maximum performance or maximum quality and tweak those settings for individual applications will love nHancer.

All Nvidia graphics cards are supported by nHancer as well as all Forceware 60+ releases, the official Nvidia drivers. Windows Vista is supported as well as DirectX 10.

Read More:

nHancer