I have just recently upgraded to a x1950xtx and currently am using the stock dual slot cooler. With riva tuner setting the fan speed at 56% the card at idle is around 40 C give or take and load closing in on 60. The fan much to my suprise, is fairly quite so nosie is out of the equation. My previous card had a zelman vf-900 cooler on it which by the way is fairly new. Here is where I'm at.

Would I see any improvement installing the zelman on my new card or would I not see much difference if I just put some better paste on the stock HS/fan, something like OCZ freeze?

40C idle and 60C load on an x1950xtx great, they have decent coolers and you won't need to touch it. They exhaust the hot air out the back which is a plus. You won't see any gains unless you are trying to OC and hit a wall that you can't get past. Don't waste your money on it. Those cards are made to run hot anyways.

Thanks for the reply jay. What do you think about then just putting better thermal paste like the OCZ freeze or AS5? Worth it?

It's not really worth it unless you are having heat issues. I've heard of rare instances where someone has a GPU that is running really hot and taking off the stock paste and applying their own saved them 10C or so. But I actually had a x1900xtx before the 8800GTS I have now and it has the older ATi cooler that had the puller fan and sounded like a hair dryer. I would see over 90C on intense games and 55-60C idle. I tried AC5 on it and didn't help one bit. I got an arctic Cooler Accelero x2 and it helped a little but if I turned the fan on 100% all the time. But I wanted to OC it so I got a Thermalright HR-03 cooler and it had a huge difference, 20C cooler. It, and im not lying, 40C idle 60C load. So if your very similar x1950xtx with stock cooler runs the same as my OCed x1900xtx you are in awesome shape.

Just curious how you were getting your temps.

And by the way, not "good" thermal pastes are a crock. AC5 even says you have to reapply once a year and I tried that and the Thermalright white paste that came with my coolers and no difference between the 2.