I paid $268 (CDN) from NCIX after the mail-in-rebate. I debated buying an 8800 GT and getting an Accelero S1 but this was almost the same price so I went ahead with the GTS hoping the extra Shaders would help gaming at 1920x1200 and the GTS cooler would be quiet.
Box Contents:
It came in a plain white box and comes with an s-video cable, s-video to component, 4-pin molex to 6-pin PCI-E adapter and one DVI-to-VGA adapter. Some CD didn't bother looking at.
Noise:
To my pleasant surprise, the card is very quiet. When the computer is first turned on, the fan maxes out to a fast wooshing noise however after that it throttles so that its inaudible. My previous video card was a passive 8600 GT, and this 8800 GTS stock cooler is almost as quiet when the computer at my feet under the desk. I consider myself picky about a quiet system and this stock cooler exceeded my expectations in terms of noise.
Temperature:
The card seems to idle around 57 degrees, which I think is pretty good considering my case temperature is pretty high since I have 2 intake and 1 exhaust 120 mm fans going at really low RPMs. After gaming awhile, I think the temperature hits around 80 deg but the fan is still at low speed I believe. My Lian-Li V1100+ case has an exhaust fan over the video card so that probably helps the temperature a bit.
Conclusion (thus far):
It was definitely good for the money and considering I like to play at 1920x1200 if possible in games. Its a no frills card, looking very much like an nVidia OEM card that I guess Galaxy resells. I haven't tried overclocking, I probably will later. However I won't sacrifice quietness of the fan for more FPS until I find a game that really needs more power. So far, I've only played Team Fortress 2 and it plays quite well with all the eye candy turned on.
