Mongo, that has always been the case, even with my D700 and D7000, however, with the D800/E, I have less noise in comparison for the same given ISO. At the end of the day, we bask in the ability to use ISO's right up to at least ISO6400 which was completely undreamed of 5 years ago. If someone had said to me, when I was shooting Pentax way back then, that I could use ISO6400 and get results I posted above, I would have scoffed at the notion and would have told them, as Michael Caton says in The Castle, "Tell him he's dreaming".