Nice observation. So you re fitted your gpus with new thermal paste now?
Yes I did and temps on my msi lightning 6970 went from 95-104 degrees celsius to acceptable 68-75. You also need to put some moderate pressure on your VGA cooler if the card is positioned in your pc case in standard way so the chip is in better contact with cooling metal. You can also try to tighten screws on the bottom of the card when you put new thermal paste but that needs to be done gently because they tend to break sometimes and then you need to improvise.