Sparkle 9800 GTX+ With Custom PCB and Cooling Review

Videocards/VGA Reviews by jmke @ 2008-12-03

In time for holiday shopping spree Sparkle launches a custom Geforce 9800 GTX+ which features onboard HDMI and a silent GPU cooling. Can it run the latest games fluently? We test twelve on them to find out.

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Trackmania Nations

Trackmania Nations

TrackMania is a series of arcade racing games for Windows, which include stunting with cars, track-building, elements from puzzle games, as well as elements testing the players' dexterity. It was developed by the French team Nadeo for the PC. Instead of following the usual trend of choosing a set car and track for playing in the game, the TrackMania games allow the player to create their own tracks using a "Block" process in the spirit of the 1985 game Racing Destruction Set and the 1990 Brøderbund release, Stunts.

In contrast with most other racing games, the TrackMania series lets the player race a track as many times as he/she wants, until time runs out. He/she can choose to respawn at any time possible, due to landing upside down, going off the track, or even just because the start did not go optimally. Although in multiplayer games multiple cars race on the same track, they cannot actually collide or otherwise influence each other.


The ugly duckling in our games’ line-up, this is a free game (go download it now!) based on stunt drive racing with fast cars. Nothing realistic about this game but pure arcade fun.

Madshrimps (c)


The game engine is very scalable, as you can play it with entry level cards or even onboard IGP, but if you turn up all the detail it will provide a challenge for the higher end cards. With the 9800 GTX+ card we were able to run at high quality with/without AA enabled, AF was set to 8x

Madshrimps (c)


Without AA enabled both cards offer very smooth gameplay at 1600x1200 and 1920x1200. The GTX+ is ~12% faster overall.

Madshrimps (c)


With 4xAA enabled the difference is smaller, the 8800 GTX average FPS is lower, but still high enough for smooth FPS. The lead of the GTX+ is now only 7%
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Comment from mAlkAv!An @ 2008/12/10
Nice review, just missing a comparison of the Sparkle cooler and the one with reference design.

 

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