Introduction

Most of you will surely know the name Sparkle, and actually it isn't the first time around that we look at a product from Sparkle Computer. Sparkle was established in 1981, Taiwan. Sparkle is a company with endless energy, vitality and a management of unmatched ingenuity and dedication. Sparkle respects individualism, insists on highest quality, cares about the natural environment and serves its customers with the highest regard. These principles have already penetrated into every corner of the company, motivating Sparkle and its industry peers toward their leadership positions all the way into the next century. To achieve their goal, Sparkle only applies the newest and most advanced graphics card technologies to its products, offers them to the market at reasonable prices and keeps a keen eye on consumer needs in the real world.

After we saw the quite successful introduction of the GeForce 8800 series from NVIDIA, it is time to take a step back and look at what the mid-range segment hat to offer. And yes indeed, that is again the playground of NVIDIA with their newly released GeForce 8600 series, bringing the DirectX 10 technology to all who couldn't afford the high-end version. Actually, NVIDIA did launch more then one mid-range card, but the most in favor for the moment is certainly the GeForce 8600 GTS edition. Sparkle actually had their card ready from the first day, although all just following the reference design. But that in the end doesn't mean anything as it is the current top of the mid-range segment, which is fully Windows Vista compatible.

For the most part, the specifications of the GeForce 8600 GTS directly resemble those of the high-end GeForce 8800 series. Based on the enormously successful GeForce 8800 series, the GeForce 8600 series brings DirectX 10 to the masses, empowering every PC gamer to enjoy the next generation graphical experience. The power of geometry shader, unique instancing, massive texture arrays and high dynamic range rendering will all be shown in an amazing line up of DirectX 10 titles coming out later this year. The GeForce 8600 series takes all the great architectural features of the GeForce 8800 series and makes it available at the popular $149-229 price point.

Main Features

• GeForce 8600 GTS (G84 at 675MHz)
• 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 Memory (2000MHz)
• High-speed 128-bit Memory Interface
• Memory Bandwidth of 32.0GB/s
• High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection
• H.264 Playback with PureVideo Engine
• Multi-GPU SLI Bridge Interconnect Support
• DVI-I Connector for Analog/Digital Display

When we look back at the G80 chip, we could definitely say it was a great improvement over the previous G71 core adding quite some complexity and advance logic. The G80 core was a completely new design dedicated to the unified shader environment that the new DirectX 10 has somehow enforced. That means that you can't speak about fixed vertex, pixel or texture units but these are now combined in what NVIDIA calls stream processors. Each stream processor is capable of being dynamically allocated to vertex, pixel, geometry or physics operations for the utmost efficiency in GPU resource allocation. With the G84 chip, the same logic is applied but in a reduced, tweaked application.

Sparkle released just one version of the GeForce 8600 GTS graphics card, which doesn't differs from the reference design. In fact the only difference is the sticker that was put on the single slot cooler. That means that the Sparkle version comes as well with the default settings, so clocked at 675/2000MHz clock speed. Now that doesn't mean at all that Sparkle hasn't got a pre-overclocked version lined up. But the overclocked, or should be say somehow tweaked version is dedicated to the Calibre series. And yes, these are as well designed by Sparkle but with some modifications to be able to raise the performance to the next level.

The Sparkle box comes with some plastic shrink wrap around it. So we had to remove the plastic covering first. This is an extra protection to the package as a whole. The box itself details very clearly the product that you are buying as well as the main features, that it is a PCI Express card with high performance GDDR3 memory. A meanly white colored box, with grey/black which are the main colors of Sparkle. What is a nice feature of the box is the plastic window at the front to give you a quick view on the graphics card itself. The remainder of the front box is quite simple though quite professional and does catch the eye of any potential buyer.

Turning the Sparkle box around we find out even more details on the product enclosed. The back of the paperboard package lists all the features of the GeForce 8600 GTS graphics accelerator and what is included in the package. Further checking the box reveals also some more information on the sides that might come in handy upon purchase of the GeForce 8600 GTS edition, like the system requirements and the key features. All these add up in the first impression of the Sparkle package, a very detailed and professional box. As far as the box goes, it certainly is very attractive and reflects the main strong points.