Sapphire Radeon HD 5550 512MB GDDR5 OC Video Card

Total Value Rating

The TVR graph is the TPR score divided by the price of the video card. The price of the video card is based on the list price of the model on Newegg.com. In the event the card isn't listed, it will be based on the U.S. $ MSRP given to us by the manufacturer.

In the event we can't source a price from either, the product will not receive a TVR rating. As with our TPR graph, the amount of video cards on the list will grow over time and the price of the model won't change from what it was when first reviewed. For this reason the U.S. $ price that the card is based off will be included next to the name of the model.

In the event you want to find the TVR rating yourself based on the current price, all you have to do is simply divide the TPR number by the list price.

TVR numbers are rounded to the nearest whole number; 100.3 will be 100; 100.8 will be 101 and 100.5 will be rounded down to 100.

Strong performance and a good price means the overall value of the product is quite strong.

Final Thoughts

It's interesting that Sapphire has chosen to OC the HD 5550, a card that is quite a low end model. The bottom line here is that the overclock that is achieved out of the box is very strong and manages to really give us a nice boost in performance. In some cases like Batman AA we saw the game from below 30 FPS which we consider unplayable, to hitting that 30 FPS minimum we need.

This isn't a bad version of the HD 5550. The price is strong, its performance is good, the cooling is nice and does a fantastic job and you've got a little bonus from ArcSoft if you want to make use of it. If you can stretch the budget a little more, you would probably be better off with a HD 5570. But if you can't, this is a good option.

The main thing you really need to look out for is to make sure you're getting one of the GDDR5 models as the HD 5550 and HD 5570 have been around for a while now. Don't get tricked in by a low price tag thinking you're going to get the same performance, as you can see here today this GDDR5 OC model of the HD 5550 was able to outperform the original GDDR3 model of the HD 5570 when overclocked.