Vortexx - Ideal Replacement For Stock HD4850?

[Pob255]

That's more down to cost cutting I beleive, the 4850 heasink is a very simple design and would have low manufactoring costs.
To make the cooler better, like say the stock cooler on the 4870, you need to use far more material to increase the overall mass of the heat sink, the surface area, better heat distribution and more air flow.
Even the original 8800gt stock cooler was a better design than the 4850 stock cooler, to cut cost even more ati seem to have used the exact same cooler as the one from the 3850.
This is one area Ati have really gone into on their new 5series cards and all of them seem to have far better stock coolers.

Back to after market heat sinks, you could have a look around for the Zerotherm GX815, that uses a tempture controlled fan so should keep the noise down at idle
http://www.zerotherm.net/eng/product/GX815.asp

Also have a trawl through fleabay you might beable to pick something up there cheaply.

[Nelsaidi]

Interesting ... Hmmm, tbh after all this I may end up getting nothing - A good clean every week should keep temps low enough (104c ?) for it not to go into mad vaccum mode.