Hmmm.  interesting development.... I spent most of today tweaking the settings in the mining software...and have discovered this sgminer behaves significantly different from other versions.  I won't get into the particulars, but suffice to say, i have discovered some quite good settings.

In short, I am now maintaining a constant 59C on the gpu, the vrm never goes above 64C, the power usage is 121.4W, and my rate has went from 64% up to 73%.  That officially puts the payout from dashminer over what I am getting from xpool.  And I am still running cool.  Looks like I may let my gpu stay pointed at dashminer, at least until I get my 290x.