notice that article says preview and gives no benchmark results. the one i posted was running the real silicon on real games. I have never heard of some of those other groups people are citing, but Extreme tech is part of PC magazine a very credible source. The fact that the 2900XT comes close to a card that is a few hundred dollars more expensive says so much. yeah its loud and yeah it needs a lot of power but that 700 million transistors there. The GTS is behind im most benchmarks and it comes close to the GTX in many and beats it in one or two, those are indisputable facts determined by a very long standing and credible source not some internet fanboy site. This isnt a thread about ATI or Nvidia fanboys saying ha i told you so, its about real world benchmarks testing this card and pushing it too its limits. After a few months the cooling will get better and the drivers will be improved and it will run cooler and seemingly faster.