Sparkle GeForce GTX 650 Ti Dragon Series review

If you have just built a new system and want to pick up a capable, yet inexpensive graphics card then there are no shortage of options available under £150. Today we are looking at the Sparkle GTX650 Ti Dragon Series priced around the £120 inc vat mark. Is this card capable of powering the latest Direct X 10 and Direct X 11 titles at HD resolution? Today we aim to find out. The Sparkle GTX650 Ti Dragon Series is a heavily modified card with custom two fan cooler. The core clock speed has been increased over the reference solution to deliver improved frame rates. Nvidia's GTX 650ti is based on the GK106, featured in the more expensive GTX660. The GK106 has two graphics processing clusters and four streaming multiprocessors to deliver 768 CUDA cores. It has 64 texture memory units (TMU's) and 16 Raster operation processors (ROPS). There is 1GB of GDDR5 memory onboard which is connected via a 128 bit memory interface. The Sparkle GeForce GTX 650 Ti Dragon Series ships in a small box featuring a high resolution render of a flaming dragon on the front. The company mention the overclocked, dual fan configuration bottom left. The bundle includes a quick install guide and a software disc, featuring some free trial software. We recommend you get the latest driver from the Nvidia support site as often the drivers on these discs can be months out of date. Sparkle have improved on the reference GTX660 ti design by incorporating a dual fan cooler. The cooler is all black, built around a dark blue PCB. This card requires power from a single six pin PCI E connector. Connectivity is catered for with a full sized HDMI port, VGA port and two DVI connectors. This is a dual slot cooler and hot air will be forced out the rear of the chassis, which is good to see. The cooler is removed simply by unscrewing the four inner screws around the core. The cooler is based around a copper base with two heatpipes running into two separate racks of aluminum fins on either side. The card has 1GB of Hynix memory onboard. The Sparkle GeForce GTX 650 Ti Dragon Series core is overclocked from 925mhz to 1006mhz, memory runs at 1,350mhz (5.4Gbps effective). We discussed the architecture earlier in the review. For our review today we are using an overclocked liquid cooled Core i7 3960X system. We are using the latest Catalyst 13.1 driver for the AMD cards, and the latest Nvidia 310.90 driver for the Sparkle GeForce GTX 650 Ti Dragon Series graphics card. We have not yet adopted Windows 8 for these reviews, as the polls on our home page and Facebook page show it is extremely unpopular with our audience. We will address this again in a couple of months time when the new operating system has had time to mature. Test System: Processor: Core i7 3960 X Extreme Edition @ 4.4ghz Graphics Card: Sparkle GTX650 Ti Dragon Series Cooler: Antec 920 H20 Memory: 16GB G.Skill 2,400mhz @ 10-11-10-30 Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Extreme Power Supply: Seasonic Platinum 1,000W Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive Chassis: Lian Li PC-A77FR Aluminium Red Full Tower Case Boot Drive: Patriot WildFire 120GB Secondary Drive: 1TB Samsung Monitors: Dell U3011. Comparison Cards: MSI GTX660 OC Edition HIS HD7950 IceQ Sapphire HD7870 W/Boost Tahiti LE Software: Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit Unigine Heaven Benchmark 3DMark Vantage 3DMark 11 Fraps Professional Steam Client FurMark Games: Max Payne 3 (DX 11) Far Cry 2 (DX 10) Far Cry 3 (DX 11) Total War: Shogun 2 (DX 11) Dirt Showdown (DX 11) Sleeping Dogs (DX 11) Alien V Predator (DX 11) All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page. Some game descriptions are edited from Wikipedia. Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand. Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk. Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable: Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems Multicore CPU support Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles) Powerful C++ API Comprehensive performance profiling system Flexible XML-based data structures We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11. The Sparkle GeForce GTX 650 Ti Dragon Series maintains a perfectly smooth frame rate at these settings, averaging 44 frames per second. Even the most intensive sections are playable, dropping to 25.6 frames per second which isn't actually that far behind the MSI GTX660 OC. Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature -restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings. The 128bit memory bandwidth will restrict bandwidth from the GTX650ti and we can see the final score is just shy of 17,000 points. This is still actually a very good rating for a graphics card priced around the £120 mark. 3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads. If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page. The overall score over 5,000 points is healthy and indicates decent Direct X 11 performance when we come to real world gaming situations. 3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance. Futuremark say "Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good. To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC." The Sparkle GTX650 Ti Dragon Series card scores 2,901 points. Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today. To test the cards we used a 1920×1080 resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparable throughout reviews. A demanding Direct X 11 title however the Sparkle GeForce GTX 650 Ti Dragon Series manages to deliver smooth frame rates of 47 frames per second at our settings, dropping to 26 frames per second in the most intensive section of the environment. Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths. We run the DX11 Graphics High 1080p benchmark, available for this game in STEAM. You can therefore directly compare against your own system. Frame rates are rounded up or down to the nearest digit. This game engine favours AMD hardware, although the GTX650 TI Dragon card manages to produce smooth frame rates around the 37 frames per second average mark. Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2. Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer. Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today. Settings: 2560×1600, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High). A demanding game at such high settings, although the Sparkle GeForce GTX 650 Ti Dragon Series manages to drive through, producing an average of 67 frames per second. Far Cry 3 is an open world first-person shooter video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal in conjunction with Ubisoft Massive, Ubisoft Red Storm, Ubisoft Reflections, and Ubisoft Shanghai and published by Ubisoft for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It is the sequel to 2008′s Far Cry 2. It has received a lot of acclaim from the public and is up for contention as Game of the Year via many publications. We configured this game to run with extremely high image quality settings, as shown above. This engine proves too intensive for the Sparkle GeForce GTX 650 Ti Dragon Series at these settings, remaining mostly unplayable throughout our test environment. Reducing the image quality settings to medium and removing anti aliasing helped improve the frame rates to deliver smooth results. Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007. We configured the game at the ULTRA preset with a 1080p resolution and 8x MSAA. I was surprised that the modest GTX 650 Ti Dragon Series was able to maintain mostly smooth frame rates at these very high settings, dropping once below the sweet spot of 25 frames per second. Reducing the anti aliasing to 2x or 4x would smooth the frame rate out a little better. Sleeping Dogs started development as an original title, but was announced in 2009 as True Crime: Hong Kong, the third installment and a reboot of the True Crime series. As a result of the game’s high development budget and delays, it was canceled by Activision Blizzard in 2011. Six months later, it was announced that Square Enix had picked up the publishing rights to the game, but the game was renamed Sleeping Dogs in 2012 since Square Enix did not purchase the True Crime name rights. We are using the highest possible image quality settings at 1080p, including the high resolution texture pack. The only card that can really power the title at these settings, is the overclocked HD7950 IceQ. We lowered the image quality settings to see if we could get the game running at a very smooth frame rate on the Sparkle GeForce GTX 650 Ti Dragon Series at 1080p. The reduction in image quality helps improve the frame rate significantly, averaging almost 100 frames per second. Max Payne 3 is a third-person shooter in which the player assumes the role of its titular character, Max Payne. Max Payne 3 features a similar over-the-shoulder camera as its predecessors, with the addition of a cover mechanic, while also retaining much of the same run-and-gun style of gameplay. Max Payne 3 also marks the return of bullet-time in action sequences, for which the franchise is notable. In bullet-time it is possible to see every bullet strike an enemy in detail. New to the series is a “Last Stand” mechanic, which gives the player a grace period after losing all health during which time the player may kill the enemy that wounded them in order to continue playing, however this mechanic is only usable if the player has one or more bottles of painkillers in their possession. With only 1GB of GDDR5 these settings exceed the onboard memory, and the game engine highlights the problem in red at the bottom. Again these high settings prove too demanding for the Sparkle GeForce GTX 650 Ti Dragon Series, dropping to an average of 25 frames per second and dropping below 20 frames per second on a regular basis. We dropped the image quality settings to place a lesser load on the GPU, totaling 924MB memory utilisation. The modest reduction in image quality settings help smooth out the frame rate, increasing to an average of 35 frames per second and holding above 25 frames per second at all times. The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this. Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic. The dual fan cooler is excellent, holding a 56c peak when gaming. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests. Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635. KitGuru noise guide 10dBA - Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves 20-25dBA – Whisper 30dBA - High Quality Computer fan 40dBA - A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator 50dBA - Normal Conversation 60dBA - Laughter 70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer 80dBA - City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal 90dBA - Motorcycle or Lawnmower 100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output 110dBA - Orchestra 120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine 130dBA – Threshold of Pain 140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range) 160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum The dual fan cooler is quiet inaudible when idle, and rises to between 33 and 35dBa when heavily loaded. To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis 2 and record the results. The GTX650 TI is a very efficient little card, only consuming 65 watts under gaming load. To overclock today we are using the latest version of MSI Afterburner. The card responds well to overclocking. We managed to increase the core speed from 1,006mhz to 1,184mhz, translating to a 17.7% increase. The GDDR5 memory also responded well, peaking at 1,525mhz (6.1Gbps effective). The Sparkle GeForce GTX 650 Ti Dragon Series is a very capable graphics card at a very tempting price point. It goes to prove that you really don't need to spend £800 on a video card just to play games with high image quality settings on a 1080p panel. We highlighted today that the Sparkle GTX650 Ti Dragon Series was able to power demanding Direct X 11 titles such as Alien V Predator at very high resolution settings. Other demanding Direct X 11 titles like Dirt Showdown were (borderline) playable at 1080p with the ULTRA preset and 8 x anti aliasing. Obviously when we crank the image quality settings in the latest Direct X 11 titles such as Sleeping Dogs and Max Payne 3 the card shows bandwidth limitations. At this price we do expect to make some compromises and a little reduction in image quality settings push the frame rate back into the sweet zone. The Sparkle GTX650 Ti Dragon Series graphics card is quiet, even when heavily loaded, and demands very little power at the socket, around 65 watts when gaming. Thanks to the adoption of a capable dual fan cooling system the card never runs hot either, hovering between the 55c and 60c zone under load, and dropping to under 30c when idle. If you currently game on a 1080p panel and are limited in budget to less than £150, then the GTX 650 Ti deserves some serious consideration. The only issue right now is availability in the United Kingdom. Sparkle informed us before going live that stock has yet to reach our shores, but you can buy it from Mindfactory.de in Germany for around 130 euro. We would expect it to sell for around the £115-£120 mark in the UK when it arrives. Pros: Competitive pricing. great gaming performance at 1080p. quiet. runs cool. low power demand at socket. Cons: extensive competition between £120-£150. poor availability. Kitguru says: A quiet, competitively priced gaming card, ideal for budget oriented gamers at 1080p resolutions.

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Sparkle GeForce GTX 650 Ti Dragon Series review

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