Hi there,  
 I'm using a Gigabyte GeForce 8800GT with 169.21 drivers. Like most people with this card I'm having overheating problems when gaming and after trawling the internet for solutions I downloaded Rivatuner 2.06 and followed the instructions ( http://www.guru3d.com/article/article/449/ ).  
My concern is that the fan seems to be completely unresponsive to the profile commands. The temperature is still hitting the 90's (at which point the system crashes) and there is no audible increase in the fan speed (i'm told the stock fan is extremely loud when at 60 - 100%).
I've also noticed that in Rivatuners Hardware Monitor there is no option to display the fan rpm. I don't know if that's significant but I noticed there was a fan rpm graph visible in the tutorial pics so maybe this will mean something to someone with more experience.
I also tried the short method simply boosting the speed to 100% in Low Level Fan Control - also unresponsive.
 
If anyone can help me out with this i'd be grateful - been in front of my computer for 3 nights straight and I think i'm developing blood pressure problems from the frustration.

I'm running 2 8800GT's in SLI and after 10-12 hours gaming they are barely hitting 70c, and that's with the stock HSF's! Time to do something about your case ventilation perhaps?

Thankyou for your response.
 My case ventilation isnt the greatest however I think this wouldn't be a problem if the stock gpu fan would actually work at higher than 30% - I don't think it's going higher than 1k rpm.
I downloaded RivaTuner for the custom fan settings access - problem is the fan dosn't respond to the commands.
I'd really like this to work as I would like to avoid buying more hardware and it seems stupid for a gpu fan to even be released on the market that dosnt spin faster when the card heats up.

If the fan is not spinning up then you may have an issue, my two run @1100 rpm in 2D mode but when gaming loads heat them up the fans spin up to 1900rpm and although I have Rivatuner installed and running I have not/can't get it to do diddly squat with the fan control.

here's how I did it.  
1 Open up Riva tuner
2 In the target adaptor box click on the "customize" tab
3 It brings up 6 options...Click on "low-level system settings"
   this should bring up the "low level system tweaks box", which is where you control set and save fan settings
4 check the "enable lowlevel fan control" box
5 then check the fixed box and move the % tab to whatever speed you want your fan to run at
6 then put a check in the box where it says "apply settings at windows startup"
7 click on apply at the bottom of the window and exit
8 restart pc and see if it works
 
 
It worked for me. I set my fan at 70% and my EVGA 8800gt runs at 49*c idle and 72*c full load/stress test while being overclocked to Superclocked settings(650 core and 950{1900 effective}memory.  It's definitely loader, but not annoyingly so

I've tried that already and it has no effect whatsoever on my cards.

 
I have also tried this but the fan is unresponsive.
When you access the RivaTuner Hardware Monitor is there a graph displaying your gpu fan rpm? Mine is not there so i'm thinking that maybe this has something to do with the problem.

I'm running Everest and using the plug-in from that, but if you click on the 'setup' button on the bottom right-hand corner of the graph and then click on the Plugins button and then start enabling a few of them you may get lucky.

Get the latest version of rivatuner and 169.25 or .28 beta drivers.
Or maybe rivatuner's having problems with detecting the drivers, try reinstalling everything..
 
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The latest international drivers are 169.21 and Rivatuner's latest is v2.06, didn't work with the Beta drivers either.