When I first looked at the specs of the EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GS I wasn't sure if the card had enough steam to compete in the $150-$200 segment which is basically owned by AMD's Radeon HD 3850 and HD 3870. Without overclocking the card sits nicely in between the HD 3850 and the HD 3870 offering great performance for its price.
However the card has some very important advantages over the offerings from AMD. First it is quiet, and by quiet I do not mean just a bit quieter. In our tests the card could claim the number one spot in both idle and load fan noise making it the quietest card we tested so far. With 22.4 dbA under load it is so quiet that you can easily put it into a media PC system and won't be bothered by the fan noise.
The most amazing fact is the overclocking potential of this card. We saw overclocks of 27% on the core and 30% on the memory, matching the GeForce 8800 GT's performance. The only difficulty is getting past the 680 MHz core clock limit of the NVIDIA drivers. For budget oriented overclockers this card is a great deal because you can get huge performance gains for a small price. I have said countless times that I personally would never buy a video card for more than $250 because it's just a waste of money for too little performance gained. With the GeForce 8800 GS you can have both a great price, massive overclocking (= fun) and blazing performance.

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