Sparkle GeForce GTX 580 : Great Performer

When one thinks of buying a graphics card, Sparkle is probably one of the last brand names that comes to their mind. Whether you’ve heard of them of not, Sparkle has been in the GPU business for quite some time now and Palit are known for their aggressive pricing compared to veteran brands like Asus, XFX, etc. Today we have a GTX 580 from them in our labs and unlike the Asus GTX 580 we tested a few weeks back, this is the vanilla version of the graphics card. 

Features and Design

As compared to the other GTX 580s we’ve seen, Sparkle has used very conservative packaging. The box is small and compact which I guess makes better logistical sense, as also does the job of getting the message across. This is the VGO edition (even though the box doesn’t mention it) which comes with the reference cooler while the ‘Guru’ edition has a fancier third party cooler and higher clock speeds. The bundle is standard, you get a driver disk, power cables, a mini-HDMI to HDMI cable and a ‘free pen’ (go figure). 

Very similar to the reference design

The card measures 10.5-inches in length which is just slightly shorter than the GTX 590, so you're still going to need a decent mid-tower chassis to house this. Everything runs at stock frequencies so we have the core running at 772MHz while the 1.5GB GDDR5 memory runs at 4008MHz (effective speed) on a 384-bit memory bus. Sparkle claims this to be the world's first independently produced GTX 580, I’m not really sure what to make of this as they don't elaborate further but hey, as long as it performs well, I really don't care.  

Lots of room for ventilation

There are two dual-link DVI-I connectors at the back and a mini-HDMI connector, as well. To power the card you’ll need one 6-pin and one 8-pin connector so a good 600W PSU is mandatory. Notice the purple DVI ports, now there's something you don't see everyday. 

Test Rig Specifications

Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40 GHz

Motherboard: GIGABYTE P67A-UD3R

Memory: Corsair Dominator GT 6 GB DDR3 (3 x 2 GB)

Hard drive: WD Velociraptor  300 GB

GPU: Sparkle GTX 580

PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro 1000W

Driver Version : 275.33