The galaxy card you are referring to uses a dual slot cooler with a fan that spins at a constant 3000rpm. It was apparently made obsolete, but being australia, there is probably still stock around. There is also another cooler made by coolermaster with a zalman "flower" design (much quieter), but both cards have the same product code, so it's a hit and miss. You could ask the retailer about it, but I reckon the "local shops" you are referring to would include MSY which lists "generic" cards and has zero customer service .
FYI Palit actually makes cards listed under their own name, as well as XpertVision, Gainward and one other brand. Same as Foxconn makes cards for other companies who rebrand them, so in essence there is no difference between those, other than the sticker and possibly the cooler. Obviously if the card is manufactured by somebody else you can expect a difference.
@Kamrooz: In australia, life-time warranties aren't honoured, only 1-2 year warranties (at least from XFX).
@night_wolf_in: Reference design FTL! I prefer cards with better power circuitry. The Galaxy card Xanadu mentioned has an extra power phase and native HDMI (no adapter needed if only one monitor
).
If you get the one with the zalman cooler, it also has a jumper on the PCB that seems like it lets you swap between two VGA BIOSs, one with a 1.05V vGPU and one with a 1.1V vGPU. No need to flash the BIOS to make a minor voltage bump, and if you do flash the BIOS and screw it, you should be able to swap the jumper over and boot with the other BIOS.