If we look at the main character of today's article from the viewpoint of the speed characteristics, there is nothing new, or almost nothing about it. Because the Sparkle GeForce 8800 GT is of the reference design with the only difference in color. On the other hand, the cooling system has proved to be the major trump of the new product, but at first glance it may scare some potential buyers away. The thing is that absolutely all modern video cards offer quite high heat emission and therefore heat up immensely. Certainly, all becomes known through actual comparison, so in various reviews we can come across comments like the chip has proved to be quite cool, but that doesn't at all mean it is cold. - Digital-Daily

Sparkle GeForce 8800 GT 512MB Cool-Pipe3 Preview

The same can be said about the G92 chip as well, on which all GeForce 8800 GT video cards are based. As compared to the predecessor G80, the new chip has turned more economical in terms of power consumption and thus emits less heat. However, video cards on its base sometimes heat immensely, and many may ask the reasonable question, how will a passive cooling system cope with the job it has to do? It has often happened that the fastening of not the lightest cooling systems was not adequate to their weight, in the end they departed from cooled items, which resulted in their overheating and sometimes failure.

The package of the Sparkle GeForce 8800 GT is of rather strict shape, with the letter S carved over the center relaxing the perception. You can see the video card through the notches. There is nothing interesting on the reverse side of the box. The only thing what is there is standard praises and consistent information. The package bundle of the video card does not stand out with abundance and contains only the most needed items. On the one hand, it is sad that the manufacturer has not put one or two games into the bundle. And on the other hand, it is nice that you pay only for the video card and not unneeded added bonuses.

You can somehow estimate the card after the first glance. The first and most important thing is that the radiator, using three heatpipes, is brought over to the reverse side of the video card, that is, on top of the already installed video card. We have already examined a solution like that and were really pleased, because it demonstrated its exceptional efficiency. At last, video card manufacturers have finally come to their senses and stopped ignoring the energy conservation law when producing passive cooling systems. The thing, however big and nice the cooling system may be, heat must be rejected from it.

The blue PCB of the Sparkle GeForce 8800 GT is made following the reference design. The G92 chip positioned in the center is surrounded by eight GDDR3 memory chips that form 512MB of video memory. The blue stickers on the memory chips are heat conductive washers to contact the radiator. The memory is made by Qimonda and offers 1.0ns access time, which is equivalent to 2000MHz effective. The reverse side of the video card also follows the reference design and doesn't stand out with anything. It is now high time we checked the efficiency of the cooling system in action, and try the video card for overclocking.

A couple of words on the overclocking. The Sparkle GeForce 8800 GT was able to conquer the frequencies 740/2000MHz with a shader clock of 1800MHz, which is about the same as with the standard GeForce 8800 GT which we have checked out before using the reference cooling design. The new product by Sparkle will be up to the mark for those who value the quietness but at the same time don't mind play a favorite game for an hour or two. In terms of the speed characteristics, we see quite a regular and absolutely noiseless GeForce 8800 GT which comes highly recommended.