Over on Anandtech I just noticed this article (part of their Comdex coverage):

http://www.anandtech.com/cooling/showdoc.html?i=1754

If you go the the "Zalman" page (page #6), they show a new K8/P4 cooler that claims a low 0.2 C/W thermal resistance! It looks like an Orb-style cooler on steriods, with a built-in embedded fan. The article claims low noise (26 dBA average and 32 dBA peak), but I wonder if you could still replace it with a known quiet fan. At 775g (!), I hope they have a REALLY good mounting system.

There is also mention of a fanless Radeon 9700 cooler and a 400W power supply. Very cool stuff (no pun intended).

I hope we'll see a review of these on SPCR soon. Any word on these, Mike?

They told me about them & said they'd send over samples when available. 775 gm is lighter than the 6500CU BTW, which is 900g.

I found this page at Sapphire's website about the passively cooled Radeon 9700. It looks like it's just a pre-installed Zalman ZM80-HP, only the aluminum isn't plated. I definitely think MikeC should ask Sapphire for a review sample, even though I'm not sure SPCR has the necessary resources to do full justice to a high-end GPU review.

Edit/Correction:
I just read on Sapphire's website that the heatsink on its Radeon 9700 is chrome-plated, not non-plated.

An interesting note is that Anandtech reports that the 9700 with the ZM80-HP installed runs 5C cooler than with the stock ATI HSF.