ONCE IN A long while, there comes along a product that marks the end of a generation. The Sparkle 8800 GT is one such product. After many long months of wandering in the wilderness, the mid-range segment has finally emerged again. Heralding the change is a card that offers fantastic performance at a great price.

Before we wax lyrical, here are the technical specs:
Fabbed on a 65nm process, the new G92 core has 754 million transistors, Nvidia has clocked this at 600 MHz. This is actually faster than an 8800 GTX, which runs the core at 575 MHz. 512 MB ofGDDR3 memory clocked at 1.8 GHz, connecting over a 256-bit bus is slightly slower than the 8800 GTX, that has 756 MB of GDDR3 memory, connecting over a 384-bit bus. 112 stream processors is just a little less than the 8800 GTX's 128. If you're wondering why we're not comparing this with the 8800 or 8600 GTS, the answer is simple. This card blows those two out of the water.

A single slot design, with just one PCle power connector, this card looks positively petite next to the 8800 GTX. A full inch and a half shorter, it's much easier to plug into a loaded cabinet. Power consumption is lesser as well, and a 400 Watt SMPS is more than enough to run this card.
TO REALLY TEST the performance of this card, we decided to go the whole hog. The hardware was our normal test bed con¬sisting of a Core 2 Duo E6700, 2 GB of Kingston HyperX RAM and alSO GB Western Digital Raptor. A fresh copy of Windows Vista was used. Besides 3 D MaIk 2006, we used Crysis, Supreme Commander, World in Conflict, Company of Heroes, F.E.A.R, and Doom 3. The monitor was a 28 inch Viewsonic, capable of going up to 1920x1200. SC and CoH were run at 1920x1200, WiC was run at 1440x900, Doom 3 and F.E.A.R at 1600x1200, and Crysis at 1024x768. All settings were turned up to Max. The card we chose to compare to was our reference 8800 GTX. The latest drivers were used.

The 3D Mark 2006 score was the first to let is know that the times, they are a'changing. A score of 10508 compared to the 8800 GTX's 10820 is fantastic, considering the price on this card. In Supreme Commander, the 8800 GT scored 34 frames per second. The 8800 GTX got 37. Company of Heroes had the 8800 GT getting 71 frames, and the 8800 GTX got 86 fps. World in Conflict had the same difference; the 8800 GT scored 26, the 8800 GTX 32. Crysis, the new game from Crytek, is extremely hardware inten¬sive, and we had to bump the resolution down to get a decent score. The 8800 GT scored 33 frames, and the GTX 45. Doom 3 was practically identical, with a difference of only 1 fps. 27.5 for the GT, 28.5 for the GTX. F .E.A.R is more memory band¬width intensive, and the scores were 72 fps for the GT, and 89 for the GTX.

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THE NUMBERS CLEARLY show that the 8800 GT is anywhere between 5-10 percent slower than the8800GTX. What is spec¬tacular is that it manages this while being close to Rs.12,000 cheaper. Yes, that's right. You can buy a 8800 GT, and a new motherboard and processor, and still be left with change for a pizza for the price of an 8800 GTX. And you get a card that's 10-12 frames slower, consumes less power, runs much cooler, and is just darn good.
The Sparkle 8800 GT has instantly invalidated every other card on the market. It thrashes the 8800 GTS, 2900 XT, 8600 and pretty much any other card with great ease. If you have to buy a video caId, buy this one. It's as simple as that.