If a card is to blow my socks off, it need to come without any active cooling. Call me a old fart, but i still remember how awesome my TNT2 card was back in the day, and it just had a aluminum heat-sink on the GPU.
It's seems like such a waste to first consume a lot of power that turns to heat, then have to construct cards that can handle all that power AND on top build expensive heaters. Quite a few users around the world then are gaming in air-conditioned rooms, that now have to burn even more power to cool the rooms down.
So much is gained by increasing the efficiency - and while cards do become more efficient, fact is that most 'better' cards are pumping out hundreds of watts of heat.
Oh well, bring on the V8's and 100 gallons of gas. Burn baby, burn!
