Quote Originally Posted by Lemur
Only one of the reviews I've read mentioned the cooling device on the 7900GT, and it was pretty negative. So this lemur wants to hear from someone who owns one. Lemurs value their quiet gaming rigs.
Well, I won't run out and buy one, just to test it for you, but the following quotes (pulled from the sites mentioned in my first post) support my earlier claim.

HardOCP: "The Radeon X1900 XTX emits an annoyingly loud whining drone; the NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX and GT are quiet."

TechReport: "Obviously, someone working to build a super-quiet gaming rig or the like will want to take these things into account. GeForce 7600 GT and 7900 series cards will consume less power and throw off less heat inside your PC than their Radeon counterparts."

HotHardware: "A quick visual inspection did not reveal any differences in the PCB design, and both cards share the same dual-slot cooler with heat-pipes, which first appeared on NVIDIA's high-end Quadro workstation graphics cards. ... We don't have too much to talk about in regard to each card's acoustic properties, because the sum total of noise produced by our test rig's PSU and CPU cooling fans was louder than the new GeForce cards we tested. ... When the fans on the 7600 GT and 7900 GT spun up, there was a somewhat noticable higher-pitched whine emanating from our test system, but by no means would be consider any of these new cards 'loud'."

Hopefully that will hold you until someone who's bought one posts more info - but unless that person also has examples of the competition for comparison, what good is waiting going to do?

Not that waiting isn't a good strategy - I'm not going to run right out an buy a new $500-$650 graphics card, when the price will be dropping substantially in a few months.

But if you do have money to burn on a top-end card, and noise is a big factor for you, right now the 7900 series appear quieter than the x1900's.