14 DAY TRIAL // Who said that the 8800 GTX/GTS are banned from overclocking because of their thermal design? Oh right, that was Nvidia. I simply love the part when I get to say ?I told you so? but I won?t say it this time. And you know why? Because this story is a load of crap!
Maybe I?m overreacting a bit but I?m pretty sure that Nvidia had every intention of offering samples for overclocking to its partners even at the moment when they were stating that no factory overclock will be tolerated on G80 cards. As hypocritical as it may sound (and it does) Nvidia probably had some reasons to do that. But they couldn?t say that they had some problems with their early samples now, could they?
Taking the story even further, it probably shocked no one when XFX announced its first preoverclocked card based on the G80 chip. It was something natural, like the moment when you find out that Vista can crash. You get the meaning so I won?t insist more on this. Coming to the Sparkle area, I?m glad to inform you that they are the second to introduce a factory overclocked version of 8800 GTX/GTS.
Graphics card vendor Sparkle on the other hand says that it has released the "world's first overclocked Geforce 8800 GTX and GTS graphics cards." Compared to Nvidia's reference card with core clocks of 575 MHz (GTX) and 500 MHz (GTS) and memory clocks of 1800 MHz (GTX) and 1600 MHz (GTS), the Sparkle cards arrive with 630 MHz and 560 MHz cores and 1960 MHz and 1720 MHz memory for the GTX and GTS.
Unfortunately for them, Sparkle's "Calibre P880+/P880 OC Edition" graphic cards aren't the first overclocked 8800 cards to become available because as I?ve said XFX were the first to break the silence with their XXX line. And that?s not only a press release since the XFX cards are actually available in online stores and, according to Froogle pricing, carry a price tag of $500 (GTS) and $650 (GTX). The Sparkle cards on the other hand, cannot be found at the moment so the pricing is unknown.