PNY VCGGTX550TXPB GeForce GTX 550 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Pros: Low power drain and reasonable size make it accessible to most people, even with pre-built systems. Can be found around for under $100 now (I happened to get mine with a MIR for $70). Huge upgrade in performance over my old 8800 GT, I can play any game I have at 1080p at medium-high settings (tested on Far Cry 3, BioShock Infinite, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Metro 2033 etc)

Cons: At this price, there are none unless you are nitpicking because you can't play at max settings (in which case you should spend more money on a better card)

Other Thoughts: Intel Core 2 Quad (Q6600)
6 GB DDR2 800
PNY GTX 550 Ti 1 GB
running @ 1080p

Pros: I can now play World of Tanks at full res and max settings and still get 40 - 60 fps. Dial down the flowers and other things I don't need and it only gets better. Other games i enjoy are looking spectacular as well. The price did not kill my budget and play time got so much snappier.

Cons: I'm curious about the 3D stuff, but I'm going to have to go research and find tutorials to figure it out. Not apparent to a 3D newbie what my options are from all the settings i see.

Other Thoughts: Max FPS I have seen is about 70 with all settings turned down low and I have heard folks getting 100+ on other cards. It is what it is.

Pros: For whats considered a mid-level card, this thing is nothing but a beast. Got it for $80 after rebate and really great bang for the buck. Has all the features I wanted including 3D. I run CS source on max hitting about 50 fps and not an issue at all. Lifetime Warranty, SLI and the price make this an amazing card.

Cons: I am having S3 sleep issues, it worked fine after getting it up and running. After a week or so my computer would not show anything on the monitors after waking from sleep. The computer would boot up but I would have to reboot it completely to get video back. Did some research and it may be a BIOS issue but consensus states that its a problem with the architecture of the card. Dock 1 egg

Pros: Awesome card, awesome performance at a great price.

Cons: Pretty big card. Check for fitment issues if using a micro atx case!!

Pros: LIFETIME warranty(see cons tho)
better than reference 550Ti cooling solution
relatively neutral black green and aluminum color pallet won't ruin a see through computer's looks, but might be a deal breaker :P
previous gpu was a htpc 6450 style board, it was *way* nicer than onboard video, but in terms of gaming chops,... lol what. This board runs at 1920x1080 on one monitor and 1600x900 on a second, usually playing a game and doing things on the internet on the 2n'd monitor, the 6450 did ok, this PNY board is like Ryback (spelling?, the wwe wrestler) it keeps shouting "FEED ME MORE!"
Some may want to pay less and not get the lifetime warranty, go ahead this board is reference speeds with upgraded cooling so it *will* last a while if you take care of it.

Cons: It is a 2 slot board and in this instance *almost* made a third be in-accessible but the board cleared *whew* it is rather large with the plug on the back plugged in and in some instances it may block 3.5 inch bays from being used.
some may want their almost $XXX card to look nicer? mine had black shroud, white fan, aluminum heat sink, and green pcb. not really anything to be all up in arms about.

MAIN CONCERN

The original purchaser is the only person who gets the lifetime warranty, and only if you register your product on their page, this isn't too bad for the average purchaser, but builders might beware that part of the warranty clause-ing, just fyi, nothing worth docking an egg.

Other Thoughts: this board *flew* circles around the 6450 it replaced, but it's also like three times more expensive and a new*er* processing core, and a beefier processing line rather than the bare bones stock, ' here's a dedicated gpu so your processor and ram can serve the operating system, and programs. it plays blacklight retribution on high settings at 1920x1080 smooth as glass, between warranty and performance/survive-ability, I'd say it was worth the one cent less than one hundred dollah I spent for my home-girl's pc to be competent in gaming.
her mobo however decided to throw up a lot of errors due to the bios mysteriously changing a setting that caused blue screens before you got to the log in screen, went into bios, fixed it, then restarted with different settings and it booted up no sweat! it's actually helping the pc boot faster due to the decently heavy usage of 'aero' enviornment and it's windows index rating went from a 5.1/6.3 (aero/gaming) to dual 7.3 's very very nice ^-^

Pros: Runs all of my games at medium/high settings. Black ops 2 runs at 70+ Fps with max settings, 8xFSAA.

Fan is quiet for the most part unless you are really stressing it out, and it's a BIG fan.

SLI support! I'm planning on getting another one of these cards and running them together.

Fermi architecture.

Cons: Fan runs really loud at times.

No HDMI support, only HDMI mini

Pros: I've had this card for over a year now and it runs great it is a little on the hot side but my case has pretty adequate cooling to keep it running at around 30C off load. It runs most games at like 30~60FPS and some higher depending on if it's mmo or not.

Cons: None really it does get a little slow in some high demand games on ultra settings and can choke down in FPS but rarely hits less then 25 so it's best to leave things on high settings rather then ultra without testing.

Other Thoughts: I'm planning on getting a second one 550 to remove this problem or get a new card.

Pros: Everything runs fairly smooth for me having it for a year, runs gmod at 100fps-70fps, can run dead space 1&2 at high settings

Cons: Never had a problem with pny just wish they made motherboards.

Other Thoughts: I'm running some fairly old tech:
I3 clarkdale @3.06ghz on Cm 212+
Gigabyte mobo
8gig pny ram xlr8 1600mhz
Pny 550 ti fermi.
I'm sure my CPU is acting as a bottle neck for my graphics card. I'm sure you could get so much more then what I've gotten from it if you have a better set up
Cheers:)

Pros: Runs very nice and silent! Totally worth the price.

Cons: Gets very hot if your case doesn't have good cooling.

Other Thoughts: Before you buy this I would recommend making sure your case has good air flow! My case doesn't have good air flow so I have to have an external fan blowing in because when I played Crysis 2 without the fan the card got up to 170 farenheit. It is still worth the price!

Pros: This GPU is a lot more quite than I had expected. I bought this because I figured it was time to upgrade from my ATI Radeon 4600 series. You just can't beat the quality and price of this card, plus the $20.00 rebate. I had no trouble at all installing this GPU.

Cons: The card doesn't look the same as the one shown in the pictures. (at lease the one I received doesn't). Its not a big deal to me since it obviously performs the way it should but I don't like to open the box and see something different than what I am expecting. So Newegg, if you could, please just change the picture so people who are purchasing this item can see what they will be receiving.

Other Thoughts: NVIDIA 4 LIFE