NVIDIA recently released an all new 3D graphics accelerator called the G92, equipped with 512MB GDDR3 memory a new card was born, the GeForce 8800 GT. Believed to be the next best thing for the mid-range category market, we were keen to find yourself how this card performs against the former price to performance champion, the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB. And if you know it is a re-spin of the popular G80 core, then the G92 should be the next best thing to look for in a graphics card. Stock and overclocked results combined with performance scaling, we will find out what Sparkle's version of the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB has in store for you. - Madshrimps

Sparkle GeForce 8800 GT 512MB Video Card Review

Based on the NVIDIA G92 chip, the Sparkle GeForce 8800 GT comes with 112 stream processors clocked at 1500MHz, while the GPU core is clocked at 600MHz. In theory this card is faster than the older GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB, and it comes with more memory, 512MB with a 256-bit wide bus, can we say this card is a daunting competitor for the high-end GTX? For now Sparkle kept to the original NVIDIA reference card design, you will notice when blue colored PCB's appear that you got one of the cards which is designed by Sparkle themselves. Own made PCB's allows Sparkle to lower the price.

Anyway, in both cases you will get a video card which functions great. The NVIDIA reference design measures the same dimensions as the former GeForce 8800 GTS cards, only difference is that with the 65nm production process the video processor requires less juice, this card can perfectly do its work with a single slot cooling solution where the GTS needed a dual slot heatpipe equipped heatsink. Our Sparkle comes with native HDCP support, an encryption technology made for digital high definition content. ANd yes the GeForce 8800 GT comes with SLI, so you can combine the power of two such cards.

Since day one the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB has been reigning the mainstream market, now 9 months later we are faced with the GeForce 8800 GT based on a new G92 GPU, can NVIDIA hold back the competition with yet another great performance to value product? We believe so. In every game the GeForce 8800 GT was able to beat the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB version, and not by few meaningless percentages either. The main reason for this victory is found in the higher amount of shader processors and the higher clocked GPU and memory chips, giving more rendering performance.

With more companies diving into the aftermarket overclocking market people will be offered even better solutions, Sparkle's enthusiast product range dubbed Calibre is already prepping a special GeForce 8800 GT edition. Talking about overclocking, our sample did scale well with the default heatsink. In 3DMark we could not really be impressed, but in our gaming benchmarks we could get yet a great performance boost. The downside is the quality of the standard heatsink, it is not that bad because it really can hold the GeForce 8800 GT at low noise levels, but at the same time it will let your GPU heat up to unfriendly high levels.

The auto fan function works well but it seems like NVIDIA set the threshold a bit too high to keep things as save as possible. Value is one, if not the most important ways of making an attractive product, seeing the GeForce 8800 GT often perform on par and above the XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB Fatal1ty one could expect retail price just above €300, but that is clearly not the case here today, we found our Sparkle GeForce 8800 GT priced at only €229, making it impossible not to recommend if you are in the market for a mid-range priced product with high-end performance.