GTX 550Ti Stuttering

A friend of mine is having some issues with his 550Ti gpu.

His Rig:
i7 2600
8gb Ram
PNY GTX550 Ti
550w PSU
Win7 64bit

Seems like every game he plays he notices alot of stuttering and tearing.
He's tried different drivers already.
I was thinking maybe the card is downclocking to 2d clocks mid game but we have all the power saving options in windows turned off...

And I dont think its temperature related as he runs his GPU fan at 70% and temps stay at or under 50*c

I would think his setup should be able to play pretty much any game on reasonable settings...

Thats definitely odd. I have a buddy of mine that had the same issue. Let me get back to you.

Anyone else?

Well, did he try using the nV control panel to adjust Power management setting? Since it may be throttling down to 2D speed, why not try this out? I've heard this throttling affects Fermi more than Kepler, so he should go:
right click desktop -> nV Control Panel -> Manage 3D Setting -> Power Management Mode (change from default Adaptive to Max performance). It may or may not help, I dunno. But doing this mean that your card is always running at full 3D speed, it doesn't throttle down to 2D speed even when surfing or desktop.

GamerDude said:

Well, did he try using the nV control panel to adjust Power management setting? Since it may be throttling down to 2D speed, why not try this out? I've heard this throttling affects Fermi more than Kepler, so he should go:
right click desktop -> nV Control Panel -> Manage 3D Setting -> Power Management Mode (change from default Adaptive to Max performance). It may or may not help, I dunno. But doing this mean that your card is always running at full 3D speed, it doesn't throttle down to 2D speed even when surfing or desktop.

Click to expand...

I'm very skeptical that toying with the Power Management will make any difference in this situation. Is he overclocking the GPU or CPU in any way that might be causing a bit too much strain on the power supply? Or is the power supply a bit older? What model PSU does he run and how old is it? Might be barking up the wrong tree here completely but I have seen similar issues caused from a power-starved card in the past.

Damn, went to a few threads and I'd thought his was a TX750, which was obviously from another thread. Yeah, if his is a generic 550 watter, then, yeah, it could be the issue. I had mentioned the Max Performance solution as it seemed tp affect Fermi based cards, and not so for Kepler. Since OP has a Fermi, I'd thought I'd better put it out there as well. So, for now, two possible cause, Power Management and/or PSU.

Not sure on brand of PSU. GPU and CPU are not overclocked.

He also noted it doesnt seem to matter if his game graphics are set to high or low.