14 DAY TRIAL // Although most high-performance cards are large and can only fit into medium to large-sized casings, Sparkle managed to put together an NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250-based graphics adapter, which, although small and able to fit even into Home Theater Personal Computers, still delivers a high-end performance capable of handling any HD media and even the latest 3D games, which use DirectX 10 graphics features.
The card is only 6 cm high (half as large as full profile designs), making the SPARKLE GTS 250 a very good option for HTPC enthusiasts and gamers alike. It has a very large video memory of 1024MB/512MB high-speed GDDR3, which easily aced the 3D Mark Vantage High test (that demands at least 512MB of memory) and the card's Single 6-pin power supply allows it to operate on less power than the regular GTS 250 series, which uses dual 6-pin power supplies.
The card delivers realism via the built-in NVIDIA PhysX technology and its DirectX 10 GPU fully supports a Shader Model 4.0. Coupled with the CUDA technology used in its manufacture, the adapter can seamlessly render any games and play any HD media, all the while enhancing graphics realism and improving picture quality. The CUDA also accelerates system tasks such as video transcoding, delivering a performance increase over traditional CPUs of up to seven times. Connectivity options include DVI-I, HDMI and HDCP. The core clock is of 600MHz and the 1024MB/512MB GDDR3 memory operates at 1600MHz/1800MHz.
The SPARKLE GTS250 Low Profile Graphics Cards passed the HDMI ATC certification tests and deliver both HD video and audio through a single cable. The cooling mechanism is quiet and the heatsink is especially designed to cool the MOS circuit and memory. In addition, the card is also given a high level of stability and a long lifespan by the all-solid capacitors with lower power loss.
The two models, SXS2501024D3L-NM and SXS250512D3L-NM, will successfully meet the demands of any game that requires a large number of bump textures in order to render faces, foliage and any other type of graphical effects. These low profile cards will be a good addition to any system, especially HTPCs.