The more outrageous the cooling system, the larger, heavier, louder and/or more expensive it is. :disgust:
In order to get insane clockspeeds one must use insane cooling.
This resulted in a two-slot, heavy, high-power, loud and expensive NV30.
I really, sincerely hope nVidia corrected these oversights with the NV35... I'm so glad to hear it will NOT be a two-slot config. While 2-slot is fine for many, it's NOT fine for many others - A LOT of others! And you don't have to be a silent-system nut to hate the noise some of those fans can put out.
My idea of the perfect card is the Radeon 9600. Why? Because it's plenty fast but requires no extra power, runs with PASSIVE cooling which means it's cheaper to buy and will not die due to fan failure! If nVidia comes up with a sub-$200 card that can outdo the 9600 with passive cooling, I'll be all over it!
But somehow, I don't think we'll see that one for another six months.