Sparkle 8800 GT Passive: The Fastest Silent GPU in the World
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 29, 2007 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Sparkle 8800 GT Passive
This article is called a preview because the 8800 GT Passive just isn't out yet, but Sparkle assures us that it'll be available soon from TigerDirect at $319.
As we've already mentioned, the 8800 GT Passive is bone stock running at a 600MHz core clock, 1.5GHz shader clock and 1.8GHz memory data rate. In other words, this passively cooled best will perform identically to the 8800 GT we reviewed at the end of October. Impressive, if it works.
The front of the card is amazingly simple, there's a black plate where we'd normally see a massive heatsink and a small Sparkle logo, well, sparkles, in the lower right. Sparkle keeps the tough job of cooling away from the front, instead all we've got here is a plate that attaches three heatpipes to the G92 GPU.
The heatsink wraps around the back of the card, keeping it closer to the CPU in your system. The idea is to keep the heatsink in the path of a large case or PSU fan to help keep it cool since the card has no fan of its own. The heatpipes do a great job of moving heat away from the GPU but heatsinks work best if they have some air carrying heat away from the fins.
The heatsink design itself is pretty simple; there are a lot of fins made out of a very lightweight aluminum to keep the card's weight down. Despite the larger heatsink the card doesn't seem to weigh any more than a stock 8800 GT. On the flip side you've got to be extra careful with the 8800 GT Passive because these fins are easily damaged, so if you were planning on a sporty game of discus with your 8800 GT don't make it this one.
The rest of the card's attributes are standard 8800 GT fare. There's a 6-pin PCIe power connector on one end, two dual-link DVI ports at the other. S-Video out if you want blurry output to a TV, and a single SLI connector if you want to really push the limits and try two passively cooled 8800 GTs in a single system.
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FrankM - Friday, November 30, 2007 - link
The testers should be imprisoned for hardware cruelty; and the poor, deeply hurt card should be taken to a loving family where it will be taken better care of - *hint* I have waterblocks! And cookies! :DFlame on :D
Ender17 - Friday, November 30, 2007 - link
What's the big deal? This is just a cheap rip off of the Thermalright HR-03 heatsink. I've been running my 8800GTS passive for the past 6 months.j00k - Friday, November 30, 2007 - link
i'm sure all someone has to do now is make a much better passive heatsink and that'll blow this POS sparkle card out of the water. it doesn't look like much time was spent in designing the cooling solution that will effectively cool off the card.Ajax9000 - Thursday, November 29, 2007 - link
[quote]The only thing Sparkle's 8800 GT is missing is HDMI output, ...[/quote]The SLI connector photo on page 3 shows what is supposedly a SPDIF header next to the SLI connector. A couple of the pre-release leak sites mentioned that the 8800GTs were designed to do HDMI-over-DVI, but post-launch I haven't seen any reviews look into this. I don't know if it is due to many shipping cards not having the SPDIF header, a driver issue, or ... ???
bob4432 - Thursday, November 29, 2007 - link
hdmi over dvi? both are digital but hdmi has the audio in the same cable. dvi=hdmi in video qualityAjax9000 - Thursday, November 29, 2007 - link
Yep, absolutely. Rather than having dedicated wires for the audio, HDMI encodes the audio into the video signal. More detail here:http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=10316508...">http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=10316508...
Ajax9000 - Thursday, November 29, 2007 - link
Oops! Sorry about the multiple posts.Ajax9000 - Thursday, November 29, 2007 - link
Yep, absolutely. Rather than having dedicated wires for the audio, HDMI encodes the audio into the video signal. More detail here:http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=10316508...">http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=10316508...
Ajax9000 - Thursday, November 29, 2007 - link
Yep, absolutely. Rather than having dedicated wires for the audio, HDMI encodes the audio into the video signal. More detail here:http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=10316508...">http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=10316508...
misleading99 - Thursday, November 29, 2007 - link
I'm not impressed with this article.The comparisons between stock GT and the Sparkle should have been made with the stock GT's fan (which runs by default at 29%) run up to a level where it is not, or barely, audible.
While this will differ from case-to-case (I can start to hear mine around 45%), a little extra fan speed afforded to the stock GT would go a LONG way towards lowering temps and therefore showing a much bigger difference between the stock GT and the Sparkle.