Sparkle Calibre X480 GeForce GTX 480 Video Card Review

Final Thoughts
This is actually one of the only higher-end cards we have looked at in a while and we are very impressed with it.  I like what Sparkle has done a lot with this card.  First it is factory overclocked at 752MHz core (700MHz stock), 1536MB GDDR5 clocked at 3800MHz (3696MHz stock) and 1504MHz shaders (1401MHz stock).  This will provide you a little bit of a performance boost and gives you a reason to choose this card over a reference card.

The other big difference between this card and other GTX 480’s is the cooling system.  Sparkle has gone with Arctic Cooling’s Accelero Xtreme VGA cooler that features 5 heatpipes, 107 fins and 3 silent low speed cooling fans. The radical optimized air flow design is targeting to cool effectively up to 250 Watt heat dissipation.  This cooler covers the entire card to not only cool the GPU but the memory as well.  The 3 fans on the cooler are PWM fans so you really don’t have to worry about noise either.  This is just another reason this card is a better choice than a reference card.

When it comes down to performance this card beats out all of the cards we have tested it against, but keep in mind this other cards were not high-end cards like the GTX 480.  The GTX 480 competes directly with AMD’s 5870 and from all of the reviews we have read it performs much better.

For some reason we cannot find this card available online anywhere so we do not know how much you should expect to pay for it.  Overall ThinkComputers gives the Sparkle Calibre X480 GeForce GTX 480 Video Card a 9 out of 10 score and our Recommended Award!

rating9 10 small TC award recommended small

Pros:
– Accelero Xtreme cooling system
– Great performance
– Factory overclocked

Cons:
– Availability

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