Flakk wroteIn my personal experience it just depends on the manufacturer.
One brand to avoid in terms of stock GPU cooling is Inno3D, 2 of these died with my setup 3 years ago because of the crap cooler they had. Till i got an MSI with a passive cooler and i already had 2x 140mm fans on the side blowing into the card which kept it cool under 40C on Idle and 58C on load.
MSI and ASUS have good coolers but I have been told that the External Exhaust by EVGA isn't so good, can anyone with an EVGA EE card confirm this ?
actually im using the evga gtx460 EE
its really really good and runs really cool, one problem though, fan can get loud at ~50%
though ive never needed more than that , its automatic it adjusts by itself the max it reached was 50%
100% is an airplane, runs at 3540rpm
guess a little noise is worth dumping the hot air outside the case, its a life saver when you don't have enough airflow in your case