14 DAY TRIAL // After having successfully unveiled the second "world's first DisplayPort-enabled video card", Sparkle jumps out of its corner with another innovation: one-gigabyte-equipped GeForce 8500 GT and 8600 GT cards. The manufacturer has surprised everyone with no less than eight video cards featuring one gigabyte of GDRAM memory, but different in terms of connectivity and cooling.
The Sparkle GeForce 8500 GT 1GB and GeForce 8600 GT 1GB graphics cards are based on Nvidia's GeForce 8500 GT and GeForce 8600 GT rendering architecture. The G86 and G84-based cards all feature a 1280 bit memory interface, have DirectX 10 support, PureVideo HD2 technology and SLI capabilities.
"With DX10 games rapidly ramping up, ordinary GeForce 8500 GT and GeForce 8600 GT graphics cards with 256MB video memory can suffer from bottlenecks due to slow speed and insufficient capacity, so memory size is very important." said Kevin Wang, sales director of Sparkle Computer Co., Ltd. "Now with Sparkle GeForce 8500 GT 1GB and GeForce 8600 GT 1GB Graphics Cards, mainstream gamers can get great gaming benefit from high speed and high capacity 1GB video memory, Sparkle GeForce 8500 GT 1GB and GeForce 8600 GT 1GB Graphics Cards will reach the ultimate performance in latest DirectX 10 games, and users can enjoy no lag and no stuttering gaming experience even at very high resolutions and maximum quality settings."
Unfortunately for the manufacturer, the GeForce 8500 GTs and 8600 Gts come with 16 stream processors, 450 MHz for the GPU, 900 MHz shaders and 800 MHz memory for the 8500 GT and 32 stream processors, 540 MHz for the GPU, 1190 MHz shaders and 1400 MHz for the GPU, respectively.
Although the new cards have been announced to hit the retailers' shelves anytime soon with a significant price tag, they won't offer any substantial performance as compared to the 512 MB of GDRAM models. The addition of a "full, one gigabyte" of RAM memory is just a marketing strategy that is dust in the wind and holes in the pocket.