TERRIBLE noise with D700 in high iso????

Hello Everyone,

I may have posted here in the past when I first bought my D700. I have had TERRIBLE noise when shooting above 1000 to 1200 iso. I bought D700 in part because I like to shoot at night a lot, subjects such as concerts/performances and architecture, and yet when I go in to the high iso range the results are worse than AWFUL.

Has anyone else had this experience? I just tried shooting again tonight in these conditions and I could not believe how much noise was in my images. I wanted to be able to shoot without a tripod with this camera, but I have sadly NEVER been able to do this and get any result that would be anywhere near satisfactory with this camera.

Am I doing something wrong or was the advertising for D700 just dead wrong. I remember testing both D700 and D3 at B&H and there appeared to be 0 noise in the upper iso range.

thanks for input.