Ok, i finally got the EVGA 8800GT. I downloaded RivaTuner to increase my fan speed, but when i run it, a message pops up that says, "WARNING, RivaTuner has not been tested with the current installed displayed driver. It is strongly recommended to upgrade Riva Tuner to a new version, otherwise it may not work PROPERLY because the driver is not officially supported".

I downloaded the lastest driver at NVIDIA.com and my RivaTuner version is 2.06. which is the LATEST that i can find...

Do i continue to using the fan speed controls for my 8800GT then? or try and find a solution to this if there is one.

My Rig:
Dell E521
Athlon X2 4200+ ~ 2.2GHz
2 GB RAM @ 667 MHz
EVGA 512mb 8800GT
250GB hard drive 7200 RPM
500 watt Coolermaster PSU
Vista Home Premium 32-bit
22" Westinghouse Monitor (LCM-22w3) you may also modify the fan speeds by using ntune.
i like ntune because you can make the fan speedup and many other control when somehting triggers them.
such as i can make the fan speed turn up as soon as i start a 3d application or suchare you overclocking your 8800gt? is that the reason you need to crank up the fan speed?Well ,it idles around 52-53 C. and when i play games, it can reach up to 80 C (in certains games). I just want it a lower temp, and no, i am not overclocking it.80C is still fairly good. anything below 90C is good.

what is your computer case make/model?Dell. I got a Dell E521.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dime521/en/SM_EN/specs.htm#wp1052310how is the ventilation inside the case? you have to remember, you can speed up the fan, but if there is not very good ventilation in the case, your fan will just be pushing HOT air.i would say it's pretty good, if you see a Dell dimension E521, then u will see that there is a 120mm fan in the front pushing air over the CPU and its giant heatsink and out back. Although i added a 80 mm fan and screwed it on the back to help take that air out even faster. Of course i have my 8800GT stock fan that blows up into the 80 mm fan and out the back of the computer. I also have my 120mm that is on my power supply which is at the top of my case and that blows out the back also.to the best of my knowledge, the stock fan speed is at 60%. if you increase it to 100%, you will notice it gets alot LOUDER and, in my experience, the temps will only drop about 5C. i would not be worried about the peak temperature being 80C, 80C is fine. however, if you are still concerned about temperatures, i recommend buying an aftermarket cooler.i hope 80C is fine, i just don't want no over heating problems. Dont want anything to get wreckedthe graphics cards have an overheating protection system so the card will not be damaged incase of an overheat. if the card gets too hot, it will lock up your computer.haha, that used to happen to me when i didnt have good case CIRCULATION and i had a graphics card that only had a heatsink, long story short many loockups because i didnt know what i was doing...