"dual slot cooling that removes the hot air from the case is a plus in most instances."

I wholeheartedly agree with Frank, and further, I would like to point out that ALL currently available aftermarket coolers for this card do NOT exhaust the hot air from the GPU out of the case.

NVidia's GTX 265 and 285 reference cooler is actually a very well designed unit. I was pleasantly surprised when I received mine. It is much quieter than both the HD4870 reference cooler and the older 9800GTX+ reference cooler, and is still quite capable of keeping the huge GTX 285 die at a reasonable temperature (under 70 deg celcius).

No I dont work for NVidia, but I do own a GTX 285 and wouldn't trade the reference cooler for anything else on the market right now.

AMD still pwns Nvidia!
Call Charlie!

Comparing CPU power the i7 does deliver for a price, 30FPS over my rig in Crysis. See here at Toms Hardware:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-q3-2008/Crysis-1680x1050,818.html
But I am happy with my 132 FPS in the chart.

Your reference rig is pretty pricey for the few extra FPS you obtain. The CPU alone is going for $1,000 at newegg. Why not compare this overpriced beast to a reality rig the rest of us would build such as mine. A Q9650 (quad core at 3.0GHz) with a single XFX GTX 285 on a matched (1333) front side bus Gigabyte MOBO. I say Gigabyte motherboard because the last two rigs I built (one for me, one for a friend) they worked flawlessly for me. I would be interested to see how many more FPS all that extra cash buys you.

dual slot cooling that removes the hot air from the case is a plus in most instances.