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Sparkle Calibre X580

12 Nov 2010

The factory overclocked Sparkle Calibre X580 sports a massive triple-fan custom cooler from Arctic Cooling and promises better overall performance than a reference card.

Tags: nvidia, fermi, sparkle, geforce gtx 580

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HWZ's Overall Rating: 8.5

Performance:

Features:

8.5

Value:

8.5

Effective cooler

Impressive overclocking

Could do with higher clock speeds

Takes up three expansion slots

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			<h2 class="header-green">Sparkle Calibre X580 - GTX 580 on Steroids</h2>
		<span class="byline">Reviewed by Kenny Yeo on Monday, 29 Nov 2010</span>
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		 		<h2 class="page-title">Bigger and Faster</h2>
		 		<h3 class="page_title">Bigger and Faster</h3>
<p>Launched in early November, the <a href="/product-guide/view/95848/review/94587" target="_blank">GeForce GTX 580</a> cemented NVIDIA&rsquo;s grip on the title of world&rsquo;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.</p>
<p>It&rsquo;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.</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s not the first time we&rsquo;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&rsquo;s vapor chamber technology based cooler.</p>
<p>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&rsquo;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?</p>
<p>Before we find out, here&rsquo;s a look at the card.</p>
<p class="rtecenter"><img height="280" width="500" title="Few, if any, graphics cards are larger than this triple-slot, triple-fan beast." src="/files/images/card_14.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p class="rtecenter"><img height="260" width="500" title="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." src="/files/images/ports_20.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p class="rtecenter"><img height="205" width="500" title="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." src="/files/images/side_1.jpg" alt="" /></p>			</div>
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	<span class="label" style="">Tags:</span> <a href="/product-guide/all/reviews/tagged/130-nvidia">nvidia</a>, <a href="/product-guide/all/reviews/tagged/501-fermi">fermi</a>, <a href="/product-guide/all/reviews/tagged/1169-sparkle">sparkle</a>, <a href="/product-guide/all/reviews/tagged/1462-geforce-gtx-580">geforce gtx 580</a></div>
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Sparkle Calibre X580

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