NVIDIA GTX 595 (picture+Details)

[Eastcoasthandle]

To a certain extent I agree. But what about extremely quiet cards? There would be no way to tell one from another if the case fans drown them out as they would have no impact upon the decibel readings.

Decibel readings done outside of a case in a controlled environment are not meant to recreate real wold scenarios. They're meant to accurately compare one card to another in the most accurate way possible without outside influences.

But isn't that looking at the forest instead of the tree? That would be a perfect example of showing the readers what to expect. If a reviewer wants to provide data of the video card fan I can't see why that couldn't be added. But for all intent and purpose letting people know that a 3 fan PC case is louder then the actual video card at idle and/or load would be something that readers would like to know. But that's just my opinion, to each his own .