As one of the most prolific manufacturers in the business, Asus has quite an array of GeForce 8600 series cards. In total, the company offers five different 8600 models, three of which are based on the GTS. The EN8600GTS (which is technically the much more awkward EN8600GTS/HTDP/256M) is the most basic GTS in Asus' lineup. Other GTS variants come with either passive cooling solutions or a copy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

So this is the base model: stock clock speeds, active cooling, and no new game in the box. The card does come on a flashy blue board, though.

Copping a color from Gigabyte's palette, Asus has draped the EN8600GTS in deep blue with just a hint of turquoise. That isn't a standard reference board color, but the layout of onboard components looks identical to that of Nvidia's GeForce 8600 GTS reference design. Asus appears to have switched a few of the capacitors, though.

Asus does follow the reference design when it comes to auxiliary power. There's a six-pin PCIe power connector along the back edge of the card, which is something you won't find on one of the GTS cards we'll be looking at today. More on that in a moment.

Noisy reference coolers have traditionally been a sore spot on mid-range GeForce graphics cards, but Nvidia cleaned up its act with the 8600 GTS. Perhaps too little too late for Asus, which has fitted the EN8600GTS with a custom cooler that looks one part Zalman and one part old-school Thermaltake. You won't find massive, billboard-sized stickers here, just a radial array of cooling fins topped by an 11-blade fan.

In a moment we'll see just how cool this custom heatsink keeps the EN8600GTS's graphic chip. However, we should note that it is a double-wide design, so it will block the expansion card slot directly beside it.

Apart from a custom cooler, you don't get much with the EN8600GTS. There's only one DVI-to-VGA adapter, despite the fact that the card has two DVI outputs. We'd at least expect a second adapter on a $200 graphics card. Asus should really include a six-pin PCIe power adapter, too, since users shopping for budget graphics cards may not have a power supply new enough to have a six-pin connector. At least Asus throws in a component video output dongle.

On the software front, Asus includes driver and manual CDs. They haven't tried to pass off a bunch of washed-up, bargain-bin games as added value for the package, and you get a CD wallet to store the games you actually want to play.

Years of enjoying lifetime graphics card warranties from the likes of BFG Tech and others may have spoiled us a little, so the EN8600GTS' three-year warranty doesn't look all that impressive. But three years is a long time in the graphics world, so it's hard to gripe too much.