The 8800GTX and GTS parts are making a big splash on the high end market and in the media’s spotlight. Ever since their late 2006 introduction, the general gaming public and hardware enthusiasts have been 8800GTX this and 8800GTX that. Do we care? But of course!

                The Sparkle 8600 GTS running circles around our benchmarks

But let me clarify. We anticipate this product, salivate over it, want to try it out, see it in action, perhaps look at its performance numbers. Note that none of the activities above involve actually owning the card and using the hell out of it. Why? Simply because hardware that costs an arm and a leg and the hair on your head is impractical, not to mention unattainable, at least for the general gaming public in our little ‘ol Philippine Islands. It’s like trying to get a ticket to fly in Air Force 1 to somewhere.

                Sparkle 8600 GT. Note the included RGB cable

Now if Air Force 1 =  8800 GTX 768mb, and is somewhere in the “highly improbable” level for most people, these three new offerings by videocard giant Sparkle may equate to flying business class on Cathay – with a $100 rebate tucked into the deal.

The Sparkle 8600 GTS, 8600GT and the 8500 GT is evidence that Nvidia is taking care of its mainstream market – as well it should due to the fact that this market is essentially the “bread ‘n butter” of the company, for reasons already stated above. The introduction of these videocards makes high-end features such as DirectX10, support for HD gaming, and Dual DVI connectors attainable.  If you like, for comparison: business class on Cathay Pacific is just as fast and almost as comfortable as Air Force 1, but lacks the prestige and the anti-missile system. Such is progress.

                Sparkle 8500 GT. Look at how it sparkles! (Sorry.)

Following are the specifications of the three cards.

                  Credited to Derek Wilson. Prices as of April 2007.

So what exactly can buyers expect, and what exactly are they missing in the 8600 series? First of all, the similarities that these cards have with the top-end 8800 GTX are startling. A unified architecture for the pixel processing units is tops on the list, enabling these cards to have pixel processing pipeline as efficient, if not more efficient, than the 8800 GTX. The reason behind this is that “pixel processing units” simply describe how data becomes the pixels on your screen. A unified architecture, which was previously only available (for DirectX10) on the 8800 GTX, is now part and parcel of the 8600 series. Another feature is the use of GDDR3 for memory (on the 8600 GTS and the 8600 GT), with the attendant claims in performance increase.

More surprisingly thou, these cards, excluding the 8500 GT, have capabilities not even found on the 8800 GTX or GTS. The 8600 GTS and GT sports the revamped PureVideo HD Processor, colloquially known as VP2,which has the ability to offload video processing of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD video totally onto the GPU, freeing up CPU cycles and preventing any slowdown during video playback. This complements the 8600 series’ target market in the sense that 8800 GTX buyers more often than not sports powerful processors and use their units for gaming – when they want HD video playback, their CPUs are more than up to the task. An 8600 series videocard user will perhaps use a more modest processor that will benefit from video playback duties being offloaded to the GPU.

The second advantage is more academic in scope. The 8600 GTS sport HDCP protection on both DVI outputs. This simply means that the user can play protected content through both DVI outputs to, (for example), Dell’s 30” widescreen LCD – which requires two DVI connections when running at 1920x1080 or higher. On the 8800 GTX, only one DVI output is HDCP capable. This might not make much sense for gamers on a budget (which is why this is an academic point) yet the feature will be a perfect fit for those people who cares less for gaming than for large screen real estate and very good video playback.

With lower clock and memory speeds, less memory, and a smaller number of pixel processing units, the three Sparkle units will still be able to perform almost on par with their big brother the 8800 GTX, as long as the game is tweaked and the resolution is adjusted according to performance. It won’t be as pretty, but the money you save may be put aside to buy a ticket for that business class seat.

Undoubtedly, the performance of these cards will be more than acceptable to the buyers who go in knowing what they’re getting. These cards are definitely not as fast as the top-end gear, yet better efficiency and a very nice feature set closes the performance and desirability gap between the two product lines. To further sweeten the pot, a comparison between these products and the former lust-worthy hardware provide a startling revelation: the speeds, processing power, feature sets and memory are similar to older hardware and if further testing bears it out, they perform just as fast and with better looking graphics to boot. I say again: such is progress.

Specifications Of Previous Champs

Look out for an in-depth review of these cards in HardwareMag, complete with benchmarks and comparisons, in the near future - which we undoubtedly will need to do to convince Sparkle that we can buy the cards afterwards – at a mainstream friendly price.