I recently replaced my passively cooled 8600GT against this card. Of course it was only once a change which the volume was concerned, but after a little tinkering with RivaTuner this was then in the desktop operating also significantly quieter than the CPU fan. The map rotates the fan in the default settings but significantly higher than would be needed by the temperatures here. The performance I can not fault absolutely. Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty 4 or Mirror's Edge running smoothly even in highest settings. Only the World in Conflict benchmark it creates the frame numbers under realistic conditions with the 15 frames / second to press, but may be due to my somewhat weaker CPU. Only the power consumption could be less for my taste. That suddenly the PC system draws 70 watts more from the line, is not soooo beautiful.