81C is not necessarily bad, but it's coming close, especially for a 6870. Is the fan/heatsink on the card clean and free of dust? How is your case air flow? Are you overclocking?
Ravenseal, assuming the OP has the stock cooler, keeping it at 60C would make the card unbearable loud(at least to me).
Oh, it does for me too, but my Sennheisers fix that 😉