I ' m a bit biased , but if you can afford a more powerful ZOTAC , I ' d get that card . I ' ve never had a Gigabyte GPU but have gone through several motherboards from them due to faulty components and view them as being someowhat cheap for that . Also , to answer your question about ZOTAC ' s fans depending on your case , cooling and other things , under heavy load and or higher temperatures , the fans may get pretty loud . I did some stress testing with Furmark yesterday in order to tweak my overclock and at 70 % fan speed , I could hear my fans running about 20 feet away . I ' m also working on getting a better fan setup for my case though , which should help drastically with any possible heat issues . But from what I can tell , along with reviews online , the ZOTAC card is going to be better built , too . Mine is built like a tank and is very solid .