[citation][nom]zooted[/nom]So it consumes more power, and is louder than the 460 768, yet performs just about on par with the 5770? What was the point of this card?[/citation]
To be fair, we only had factory overclocked cards to test for power readings as we said in the article. having said that, chances are a reference GTX 550 Ti would have pushed 80 watts in our load test. 25 watts isn't a big deal, really. Assuming you live in a place with high electricity rates like 16 cents/killowatt hour, we're talking a difference of 0.4 cents per hour of gaming between the 5770 and GTX 550 Ti. That's under a gaming load, at idle the difference would be infinitesimal.
As far as noise, all of the cards have about the same nominal levels. under load the Zotac is as loud as the 5770, the MSI is a bit louder but as we mentioned in the article the MSI cooler doesn't get that loud during regular operation, and keeps the GPU a lot cooler. Also, the GTS 450 shares the same cooler as the GTX 550 Ti reference card, and it's quite quiet.
In any case, it's not as cut and dry as you might think by simply glancing at the charts.