14 DAY TRIAL // Sparkle started making graphics cards several years ago and did not quite make an impression with their products. But with their latest Calibre P8xx series, Sparkle aims at offering gamers an array of cards that deliver outstanding features and performance.
One of these cards is the Calibre P860, which is based on NVIDIA's next generation G84 architecture, primarily targeting the mainstream market. Sparkle chose to offer factory overclocked PCIe X16 cards with 630MHz core speed, 1620MHz 512 MB GDDR3 memory frequencies and 1386MHz shader clock. The memory interface bus remains at 128-bit, with a 400 MHz RAMDAC. The Calibre P860 graphic card natively supports NVIDIA PureVideo HD technology, providing unsurpassed Blue-ray and HD-DVD movie picture quality for the ultimate high definition experience. Furthermore, the PureVideo HD engine provides ultra-smooth playback of H.264, VC-1, WMV, MPEG-2 HD and SD movie formats, as well as noise and artifact reduction and edge enhancements for improved video quality and sharpness. Overclocked features aside, Sparkle introduces a sub-card for the Calibre P860 graphic card. The included sub-card can monitor the GPU temperature and PCB temperature on 3bit digital tube display, all this done in real-time. In this respect, the sub-card features a switch, allowing all users to alternate between real-time GPU temperature shown and real-time PCB temperature shown. Depending on the continent, users may also manually set the temperature unit to ?C or ?F. This will be a helpful tool for overclockers, thus proving that Sparkle can create customer-oriented designs.
According to Sparkle, the P860 card may deliver 7179 3D marks in 3DMark 2005, while a reference GeForce 8600 GT card scored 6249 3D marks at the same resolution and settings. Moreover, the entire Calibre series is built with the aid of high quality capacitors and components that extend reliability and stability at aggressive frequencies.