Following the myriad of links, one of the main problems seems to be inadequate cooling on the GPUs, leading to failures occurring from critical temps being reached pretty easily.

With my card, I was horrified to see it running as the hottest thing in my system - even OCed my CPU ran a full 20 degrees cooler on all cores than my GPU - so I installed teh eVGA Precision (after first trying RivaTuner) to manually run the fan a lot faster than the stock 37% when temps are under 80 deg C.

Now, I haven't experienced any failures, but I bet the day my fan dies (if it happens) I'll be one POed mofo. However, this is getting traded in for a 260, so....

100% FUD!

THE INQUIRER is known for misinformation
every article i see from them begins with ..
''we were not invited to attend''
hence the epic fail that pours out onto the keyboard....lol

Rivatuner FTW.... but the driver signing can get annoying
my fan sits @ 25% idle & i crank it to 100% when i game.
full load is about 65c ....though i have had it @ 92c !!
she didn't like that much
given it sounds like a jumbo jet taking off but i wear headphones so the only one who suffers is my other half...

Man, I am currently running at about 70% fan and at idle it is running at 48@C - and this computer has 6 fans, plus a monster 250mm side fan and it is still a lot more quiet than most systems I have heard.

I am working my way through NiBiToR to hack my card's BIOS to adjust the fan thresholds manually, but since this card goes back in a couple of days I probably should leave well enough alone :P

I've overclocked my card slightly, and upped the fan to 50% on it. It runs at 35-40C idle, and unless GPU-Z reports incorrect GPU temps, I've never seen it hit 60.

Also if the main problem is overheating, how is that Nvidia's fault? Isn't it up to the vendors to what the fan speed is set at?

Set the fan speed higher, and there will be no problems. I think they should set it at a higher, yet still fairly quiet speed of 45%

my old 8800GTS was a little loud. I never changed the settings tho. and it idles around 58C.

My new eVGA GTX260 idles at 55C with the fan AUTO'd at 40% and I cannot hear that over my system. so for how strong a card the 260 is, it's very quiet. and I like that. I have it manually set to go to 60% on start-up. you can hear that, but only barely over other fans. and that drops it to 51C.
This card is strong, and much more quiet than anything I've had before it. I'm lovin it!

Mine is one the way....

not sure where, but in a thread I mentioned you should let me borrow it for a benchmark in SLI with 2 260's.. what ya think??? lol

I'll give it back within 3 days. hehe