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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toyota - Thursday, November 29, 2007 - link
We don't know how the 256MB variants will perform, but NVIDIA claims that they will arrive at $179 - $199.http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3151...">http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3151...
jonnyGURU - Friday, November 30, 2007 - link
Yeah. Comparing an XFX card at TigerDirect vs. a BFG card sold at it's MSRP on the manufacturer's webstore is very subjective journalism there Anandy. ;)Tegeril - Monday, December 10, 2007 - link
It would seem that you missed the part where those prices were shown to highlight shipping costs.toyota - Thursday, November 29, 2007 - link
no edit?also the same article says this about 8800gt 512mb: Prices went from the expected $199 - $249 to a completely unexpected $250 - $300 range.
Crusader - Thursday, November 29, 2007 - link
Looks just like my 8600GTS from MSI with passive cooling.Gonna have to upgrade to this card though!
docmilo - Thursday, November 29, 2007 - link
I just gutted my tower and stuck my computer into a Q-Pack case and my x1900xt is running over degrees cooler. The power supply in the small case blows a ton of air straight down on the video card and when I run the ATI overdrive my card never gets over 80 degrees when testing for a stable overclock where it would push 100 degrees in my full tower case.This thing would be perfect for a case like mine.
docmilo - Thursday, November 29, 2007 - link
Over 10 degrees cooler that is. Where's the edit button when you need one?kilkennycat - Thursday, November 29, 2007 - link
Ah, yes. After at least 2 years, Anandtech and Dailytech still have not been able to attain the edit-sophistication of the article-comment section of "The Tech Report" . Maybe Scott and his crew could give the Anandtech/Dailytech web-designers a hint or two ?gerf - Saturday, December 1, 2007 - link
Editing is lame. Post it for better or for worse. I even frequent forums with no editing, much like this, and prefer it over the crappy phpBB forums.Basilisk - Thursday, November 29, 2007 - link
Perhaps I misunderstand your post, but... putting this card in my X-Qpack case would require removing a large portion of the power-supply (over the video card slot) where the heat pipes need to pass over the card. Same problem with several other cases I've used.Which is the @#$%^ problem with most passively cooled powerful GPU's: their pipes increase the vertical requirements too much. I wish they'd either notch the top of the cards for the pipes, or pass the pipes through notches on either end of the card. The current "over the top" approach minimizes their effort in re-utilizing non-passive card layouts, but the reverse could be done -- just build all cards on the notched-board design even if they use fans and no pipes.