14 DAY TRIAL // Not too long ago, NVIDIA released three new graphics cards designed for the mainstream and entry-level market segments. After the official release, several of the company's board partners announced their own graphics cards based on the brand new GeForce 9500GT, 9800GT and 55nm 9800GTX+. Sparkle decided to extend its GeForce 9500GT offer with the introduction of two new graphics cards, which were first announced late this past week.
Sparkle is one of NVIDIA' best channel partners, capable of providing some of the best GeForce-based products available on the market, video cards being the company's main focus. Their most recent GeForce cards have been designed for the entry-level users, offering them the graphics power of NVIDIA's recently released 9500GT graphics processor. The company announced three new cards, two with native HDMI and a low-profile model. All three cards have been clocked at the same core and memory frequencies, namely 550MHz and 800MHz, respectively.
Only few differences set the three cards apart, as they basically come with the same specification list. All are capable of providing a total of 1GB of DDR2 memory and 32 stream processors clocked at a standard 1350MHz. The HDMI models are obviously equipped with a built-in HDMI port, while the other low-profile card only features an VGA and DVI port, and has a PCB height of only 6cm, meaning half that of the reference model. The two HDMI-supporting cards will be offered in both active and passive cooling variants.
Aside from the custom cooling solution and non-reference features, the new Sapphire GeForce graphics cards are essentially the same as the standard 9500GT. This translates into support for DirectX 10 and NVIDIA's PhysX and CUDA technologies.
As mentioned above, the new cards have been designed for entry-level performance, which means they will not fare so well when it comes to hard-core gaming.
