Sparkle Calibre X580 - GTX 580 on Steroids
It's been barely a few weeks since the launch of the GeForce GTX 580, yet Sparkle has already come up with their own customized and factory overclocked take on NVIDIA's flagship. This is the Sparkle Calibre X580. We find out how much better can it surpass the world's fastest single-GPU reference graphics card.
Bigger and Faster
Launched in early November, the cemented NVIDIA’s grip on the title of world’s fastest GPU. Powered by the GF110 chip, it has the full 512 cores that the Fermi architecture promises and along with its other tweaks and optimizations, it could be anything from 15% to 20% faster than the older GeForce GTX 480 - a testament to its sheer brute graphics horsepower.
It’s been just a few weeks since we first laid eyes on the GeForce GTX 580 and Sparkle has already come up with their own customized version of the GeForce GTX 580. Dubbed the Calibre X580, the card is factory overclocked and comes with a massive triple-slot, triple-fan Accelero EXTREME Plus cooler from Arctic Cooling.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen an Arctic Cooling cooler this large and extreme on a card, and fortunately, they have served well in the past so it will be intriguing to see how this stacks up against a reference card’s vapor chamber technology based cooler.
As for clock speeds, the Sparkle Calibre X580 is running at 810MHz at the core, 1620MHz at the shaders and 4032MHz DDR at the memory. Compared to a reference card’s 772MHz at the core, 1544MHz at the shaders and 4008MHz DDR at the memory, the Sparkle card has received a nice boost in performance, but how will that translate in real world applications?
Before we find out, here’s a look at the card.
Few, if any, graphics cards are larger than this triple-slot, triple-fan beast.
Despite the large cooler and higher clock speeds, the Sparkle Calibre X580 still comes with the same twin DVI and single mini-HDMI ports that reference cards have.
A better look at the layout of the massive Accelero EXTREME Plus cooler. There are three heatsink arrays, one under each fan, and five copper heat pipes are threaded through all of them for quicker heat dissipation.
Test Setup
To evaluate the Sparkle Calibre X580, we’ll be using our X58 setup with the following specifications:
- Intel Core i7-975 (3.33GHz)
- Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P motherboard
- 3 x 1GB DDR3-1333 G.Skill memory in triple channel mode
- Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive
- Windows 7 Ultimate
Obviously, the key comparison here would be between the Sparkle Calibre X580 and a reference NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580. Given the modest bump in clock speeds, we are not hoping for massive improvements in performance. What we are more interested in, however, is how cool the card will run and whether that will allow for better overclocking.
And since we’ve already established the performance of a reference GeForce GTX 580 in our earlier article, we have decided to cutback on the number of tests for this card rather than running the usual suite of benchmarking tests. As such, we'll be testing only 3DMark Vantage, Crysis Warhead, Far Cry 2 and Battlefield Bad Company 2. These games will give us a good idea of the card’s performance.
Here's the list of cards tested and driver versions used:
- Sparkle Calibre X580 1560MB GDDR5 (ForceWare 262.99)
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1560MB GDDR5 (ForceWare 262.99)
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 1560MB GDDR5 (ForceWare 260.89 )
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 1280MB GDDR5 (ForceWare 258.96)
- ATI Radeon HD 5970 2GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 10.9)
- AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 10.10)
- ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 10.9)
The list of benchmarks used are as follows:
- Futuremark 3DMark Vantage
- Crysis Warhead
- Far Cry 2
- Battlefield Bad Company 2
Results
First to the Market
Given the higher clock speeds, we expected the Sparkle Calibre X580 to be faster than a reference GeForce GTX 580 and the card duly delivered. Sadly however, the increase in performance wasn’t really great and would probably go unnoticed by most people, because the Sparkle card was only about 1% to 4% quicker.
Still, with the help of its massive cooler, the Sparkle Calibre X580 managed much improved operating temperatures - 69 degrees Celsius under load is a considerable improvement over a reference card’s 80 degrees Celsius.
The lower operating temperatures also helped it achieve a higher overclocking state compared to a reference card. After disabling the GeForce GTX 580’s auto throttling safety mechanism that prevents the chip from overheating, we managed to attain a maximum overclocking state, giving us 15035 3DMarks - a healthy improvement of 10%.
However, do note that while the massive cooler does help the card run cooler, it comes at the expense of an additional expansion slot, which makes SLI configurations largely impossible unless you have a motherboard with widely spaced PCIe slots. Needless to say, this makes the Sparkle card more suitable for those who have no intention to upgrade to an SLI configuration.
A decent GeForce GTX 580 for those who have no intention to go down the SLI route.
Pricing wise, the Sparkle Calibre X580 comes in at around US$579 a good US$50 or so more than most other reference cards. While this might seem extravagant, remember that an aftermarket cooler like the one employed by Sparkle on their Calibre X580 card costs about US$65, so in a way, the Sparkle Calibre X580 is reasonably priced, especially if you are looking for an extreme aftermarket cooling solution.
In all, the Sparkle Calibre X580 is a decent take considering it's the first non-reference GeForce GTX 580 card to hit the market. Although the card is not much quicker than a reference one, cooling has been significantly improved nonetheless, so if you don't mind the space that it takes up, it's a decent choice for prospective GTX 580 buyers.
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