Sparkle GTX650 OC Dragon Series Review

The Sparkle GTX650 OC Dragon Series will prove an ideal purchase for gamers on a strict budget, or for the growing audience who are building a new low cost, low noise, media center.

Nvidia and AMD acquire the majority portion of their sales in the sub £100 market, so these cards are incredibly important for both system builders and channel partners targeting specific price points. Competitive pricing combined with reasonable performance and low power drain are key selling points in this cut throat sector of the market.

The Sparkle GTX650 OC Dragon Series on a performance level is positioned between AMD's HD7750 and HD7770. It certainly isn't going to set the benchmarking world alight, however when we factor in the £90 asking price then it really does make a lot of sense. Students with only a modest amount of cash to spare, or people building a secondary system for the living room will find this solution very appealing.

While Nvidia will never claim this card is designed specifically for 1080p gaming, our testing has highlighted that many currently available game engines run perfectly fine at 1920×1080 with a modest amount of eye candy enabled. Almost every game we tested today with the GTX650 at 1080p delivered a smooth real world gaming experience above thirty frames per second, even when tasked with anti aliasing.

When we look back through hardware history in the last 10 years, these low end, budget oriented discrete solutions were never capable of powering true high definition resolutions. Obviously there will be situations with Direct X 11 engines for instance, when the restricted 128 bit memory interface and reduced shader processing power will limit frame rates, but generally it is surprisingly capable.

Sparkle have supplied their GTX650 OC Dragon Series card with a modest core clock boost and their fan profile is non aggressive. While temperatures may rise to 67c under load, the fan never spins fast enough to emit a high level of noise, ideal for a media center environment. I really do loathe watching movies with distracting fan noise in the background.

It is worth pointing out that onboard graphics solutions just don't make the grade for me, as I crave the highest image quality possible, only achievable from either Nvidia or AMD discrete solutions. The GTX650 delivers stunning image quality when viewing bluray discs, perfect for partnering up with a 40 inch+ high definition television set.

In closing, Sparkle GTX650 OC Dragon Series is ideal as a low cost solution for a media center or entry level gaming system. It comes highly recommended.

Available from ARIA for £89.94 inc vat.

Pros:

• Low power drain.
• quiet.
• inexpensive.

Cons:

• Lacks grunt with demanding Direct X 11 titles.

Kitguru says: It is all about the price, for less than £90, this is a sweet deal.

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