14 DAY TRIAL // Apart from the high-end Calibre X580 Captain and the Calibre X560 series, Sparkle has also announced today a series of graphics range based on the Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti and GT 520 cores, that target mainstream gamers and HTPC enthusiasts.
Called the Calibre X550 Ti DF, Sparkle's GTX 550 Ti creation features a similar design with that of the company's X560 graphics cards, but its cooling solution has been simplified a bit as the GF116 core utilized produces less heat than the GTX 560.
These changes however haven't stopped Sparkle from increasing the operating frequencies of the card over's Nvidia reference values, which enabled the X550 Ti DF to surpass the stock GTX 550 Ti by 12% in 3DMark 11, according to the company's internal tests.
The GF116 core that Nvidia's GTX 550 Ti is based on includes 192 CUDA processors, 32 texturing units, 24 ROP units, and a 192-bit memory bus that is connected to 1GB of GDDR5 video buffer.
Moving to the much slower cards in the Calibre X520 series, these were specially developed in order to be used in HTPC systems.
As a result, Sparkle's GeForce GT 520 solutions sport a low-profile design and are cooled by a special version of the company's Cool Pro thermal module. This uses a dual ball bearing fan, which is rated at 28dBA at its highest rotation speed.
Outside of the quiet cooling solutions, Calibre X520 graphics cards feature Japanese all solid capacitors and can include up to 2GB of video buffer.
At the heart of the GeForce GT 520 stands the Nvidia GF119 graphics core that packs 48 stream processors, 8 texture units, 4 ROP units and a 64-bit memory bus that is usually linked to 1GB of DDR3 memory.
Sparkle hasn't released any information regarding the price, or the release date, of its Nvidia-powered Calibre solutions.
