Introduction

Our first hands-on experience with NVIDIA's Fermi comes from Sparkle GTX 470, a high end video card which we compare a whole bunch of previous and current generation competitors. Is the nextgen from NVIDIA worth the money? Read on to find out.



At first I would like to thank Sparkle for making this review possible.



About Sparkle:

“ SPARKLE was established in 1982. SPARKLE is a company with endless energy, vitality and a management of unmatched wit and dedication. SPARKLE respects individualism, insists on highest quality, cares about the natural environment and serves its customers with highest regard. These principles have already penetrated into every corner of the company, motivating SPARKLE and its industry peers toward their leadership positions all the way into the next century.

Motivation of Human Hearts

SPARKLE never ceases to motivate for the sake of creativity and innovation. SPARKLE always seeks to surpass the status quo, and has always been attentive to the basic human elements of individualism and intuition.

Unending Pursuit of Quality

SPARKLE only applies the newest and most advanced graphic card technologies to its products, offers them to the market at reasonable prices and keeps a keen eye on consumer needs in the real world.

SPARKLE has comprehensive lines of products tested with the most stringent quality standards and test requirements. SPARKLE products also provide the most stable operation and excellent performance, and are available to consumers at very market competitive prices.

Attentive Post Sales Service

SPARKLE has always been attentive in providing high value, high quality products and is dedicated to maximize customer satisfaction. Everyone at SPARKLE is prepared and ready in providing the best possible service. Highly trained and professional customer service staff have the ability to solve any problem a customer might encounter and make sure that everyone and their needs will be taken care of.

Environmental and Natural Resources Preservation

SPARKLE has always believed in maintaining a sustainable business and social responsibility; and SPARKLE has two important principles in regards to the natural environment preservation:
All product planning will have environmental protection aspects taken into consideration.
All relevant products and services are environmentally-friendly within their cycles.

Research and Development

SPARKLE markets its products globally, in more than 80 countries across 5 continents. SPARKLE has a very capable R&D team with highly flexible mobility. SPARKLE offers products and services all over the world and in various fields keeping pace with all developments.”

Features:

SPARKLE GeForce GTX 470/465 Graphics Cards Use Solderless Product With Green Process And Free Contact Process Cooling Technology

Ordinary Graphics card cooler more commonly use soldering process with tin-based solder alloys, the soldering tin will melt at a certain temperature, the binding layer is formed between the metal welding parts and tin atoms. When the graphics card starts running, the GPU heat transferred between the cooling metals must pass the soldering medium first. The SPARKLE GeForce GTX 470/465 Graphics Card uses Solderless Product With Green Process, making the cooling metal to fully contact each other, improving the ineffective heat conduction caused by traditional tin soldering and reducing the thermal resistance. Compared with tin soldering used by ordinary graphics card cooler, the Solderless Product With Green Process, has a higher heat transfer efficiency.



With 5 high-performance copper heat pipes, the SPARKLE GeForce GTX 470/465 Graphics Card uses Free Contact process design, the heat pipes contact the GPU directly. This design allows the heat to transfer to the heat sink rapidly, effectively increasing the heat conduction, the cooling performance was significantly upgraded to maintain the stability of the system which is running efficiently.



In the actual full loading / idle tests, compared with GeForce GTX 470/465 graphics cards using ordinary cooling fan on market, the working temperatures of SPARKLE GeForce GTX 470/465 Graphics Card is reduced by 5 degrees / 3 degrees.

Unlike the standard fan design on the GeForce GTX 470/465 reference card, the SPARKLE GeForce GTX 470/465 Graphics Card introduces the turbine thruster concept with large diameter 80x15 cooling fan that can produce stronger wind pressure during operation and quickly remove excess heat. Using the built-in PWM Technology, the fan automatically adjusts its rotational speed according to load balance for an even more effective reduction of noise during operation.

Because the automatic fan speed adjustment, during actual tests, SPARKLE GeForce GTX 470/465 Graphics Card has 6% lower than the working noise of the GeForce GTX 470/465 graphics cards using the reference cooling fan on the market.


Microsoft® DirectX® 11 Support

DirectX 11 GPU with Shader Model 5.0 support designed for ultra high performance in the new API’s key graphics feature, GPU-accelerated tessellation.

NVIDIA® 3D Vision™ Surround Ready

Expand your games across three displays in full stereoscopic 3D for the ultimate “inside the game” experience with the power of NVIDIA 3D Vision and SLI technologies. NVIDIA® Surround™ also supports triple screen gaming with non-stereo displays.

Interactive Ray Tracing

By tracing the path of light through a 3D scene, ray tracing uses the power of the GPU to create spectacular, photo-realistic visuals. Get a glimpse into the future of gaming with ray tracing.

3-way NVIDIA SLI® Technology

Industry leading 3-way NVIDIA SLI technology offers amazing performance scaling by implementing 3-way AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering) for the world’s premier gaming solution under Windows 7 with solid, state-of-the-art drivers.

NVIDIA PhysX® Technology

Full support for NVIDIA PhysX technology, enabling a totally new class of physical gaming interaction for a more dynamic and realistic experience with GeForce.

NVIDIA CUDA™ Technology

CUDA technology unlocks the power of the GPU’s processor cores to accelerate the most demanding tasks such as video transcoding, physics simulation, ray tracing, and more, delivering incredible performance improvements over traditional CPUs.

32x Anti-aliasing Technology

Lightning fast, high-quality anti-aliasing at up to 32x sample rates obliterates jagged edges.

NVIDIA® PureVideo® HD Technology

The combination of high-definition video decode acceleration and post-processing that delivers unprecedented picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color, and precise image scaling for movies and video.

PCI Express 2.0 Support

Designed for the new PCI Express 2.0 bus architecture offering the highest data transfer speeds for the most bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications, while maintaining backwards compatibility with existing PCI Express motherboards for the broadest support.

Dual-link DVI Support

Able to drive industry’s largest and highest resolution flat-panel displays up to 2560x1600 and with support for High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP).

HDMI 1.3a Support

Fully integrated support for HDMI 1.3a including xvYCC, deep color, and 7.1 digital surround sound.

Specifications:



After a very long delay, Nvidia have finally released their 40nm high performance GPUs, with the intention to take the crown from AMD. The GPU has “Fermi” code name, fully supports DirectX11 and has an incredible number of3200 million transistors.

Most people expected the flagship, GTX 480, to be launched with 512 Shader Processors, but instead it has 480. The 512 Shader variant went to Quadro video cards, which cost an arm and a leg.

The GF100 chip core layout is divided into 4 GPCs (Graphic Processing Clusters); each GPC has four SMs (Streaming Multiprocessors) each which incorporate 32 Shader Processors (or CUDA cores); this totalizes 512 Shader Processors, like the Quadro cards have.



The GTX 470, with its 64 cores missing, has also the ROP and L2 cache and memory controllers cut.

With this modular design, it is easier to create in the future GPUs with less and less Shader Processors and cover all mainstream and entry level markets.

In Polymorph Engines that we can see in the diagram we can see the five stages:

-Vertex Fetch
-Tesselator
-Viewport Transform
-Attribute Setup
-Stream Output



These stages process the information from each Streaming Multiprocessor they are associated with. The data will then get to the Raster Engine which has 3-pipeline stages, that pass data from current to the next.



In conclusion, we can find a total of 16 Polymorph Engines and 4 Raster Engines, one for each GPC.

The latest GPUs from Nvidia fully support DirectX11 instructions which include GPGPU (DirectCompute 11), tessellation and improved multi-threading; they also come with Shader Model 5, better shadows and HDR texture compression.

Tesselation, as described on the Unigine website, is a “scalable technology aimed for automatic subdivision of polygons into smaller and finer pieces, so that developers can gain a more detailed look of their games almost free of charge in terms of performance. Thanks to this procedure, the elaboration of the rendered image finally approaches the boundary of veridical visual perception: the virtual reality is vivified at your fingertips delivering engaging gaming experience.”

Here is a modeled house inside the Unigine Heaven benchmark, without and with the tessellation feature enabled:

The multi-threaded rendering is similar to the techniques applied for the current CPUs. If a shader or an instruction has to be queued up, the process creates a delay. The current GPUs can now process data completely threaded, which bring a better overall performance.

The DirectCompute feature allows access to the GPU for stream computing; it shares a range of computational interfaces with its competitors: OpenCL and CUDA.

3D Vision Surround and Nvidia Surround are the responses to ATI’s Eyefinity. Nvidia Surround allows the use of 3 separate monitors to be used in 3D applications, with an SLI setup. This feature is backwards compatible with GT200 and GF100 series and allows a maximum resolution of 2560x1600 per monitor.
The 3D Vision Surround offers stereoscopic viewing when using 3 monitors at once. To use this feature we also need three 120Hz displays, same model and same make to ensure uniformity; the system must be very powerful, because it needs to process six high-res 1920x1080 images, two images for each 120Hz monitor.

About Nvidia PhysX

Delivering physics in games is no easy task. It's an extremely compute-intensive environment based on a unique set of physics algorithms that require tremendous amounts of simultaneous mathematical and logical calculations.
This is where NVIDIA® PhysX™ Technology and GeForce® processors come in. NVIDIA PhysX is a powerful physics engine which enables real-time physics in leading edge PC and console games. PhysX software is widely adopted by over 150 games, is used by more than 10,000 registered users and is supported on Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and PC.
In addition, PhysX is designed specifically for hardware acceleration by powerful processors with hundreds of cores. Combined with the tremendous parallel processing capability of the GPU, PhysX will provide an exponential increase in physics processing power and will take gaming to a new level delivering rich, immersive physical gaming environments with features such as:


* Explosions that cause dust and collateral debris
* Characters with complex, jointed geometries for more life-like motion and interaction
* Spectacular new weapons with incredible effects
* Cloth that drapes and tears naturally
* Dense smoke & fog that billow around objects in motion

The only way to get real physics with the scale, sophistication, fidelity and level of interactivity that dramatically alters your entertainment experience will be with one of the millions of NVIDIA PhysX-ready GeForce processors.

Here are some PhysX demos from Youtube :

Fluid demo :

The Great Kulu :



Deformable objects :



Nvidia CUDA

NVIDIA® CUDA™ is a general purpose parallel computing architecture that leverages the parallel compute engine in NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs) to solve many complex computational problems in a fraction of the time required on a CPU. It includes the CUDA Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) and the parallel compute engine in the GPU. To program to the CUDATM architecture, developers can, today, use C, one of the most widely used high-level programming languages, which can then be run at great performance on a CUDATM enabled processor. Other languages will be supported in the future, including FORTRAN and C++.

With over 100 million CUDA-enabled GPUs sold to date, thousands of software developers are already using the free CUDA software development tools to solve problems in a variety of professional and home applications – from video and audio processing and physics simulations, to oil and gas exploration, product design, medical imaging, and scientific research.

Technology features :

* Standard C language for parallel application development on the GPU
* Standard numerical libraries for FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) and BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra Subroutines)
* Dedicated CUDA driver for computing with fast data transfer path between GPU and CPU
* CUDA driver interoperates with OpenGL and DirectX graphics drivers
* Support for Linux 32/64-bit and Windows XP 32/64-bit operating systems

CUDA Realtime Particles demo :

Packaging

Before beginning with the card description, I must also say “special thanks” to the people at Customs that unsealed the box and instead of opening it properly to see what is inside, they ripped it apart:



The GeForce GTX 470 video card from Sparkle comes in a package with a very nice external box art; on the frontal part we can see a large Sparkle logo, the company logo, some icons that describe the supported technologies and specifications; also on the frontal part it is mentioned that inside the box we can find a Mini-HDMI cable:



On one of the box sides, we can see the minimum system requirements listed:



On the opposite side, we can see a summary of the card specifications:



On the back side of the box, a short product description can be found and some product features are explained; some of the product specifications are also listed on the bottom part:



For more protection, the card and its accessories are found in a plain white cardboard box:



When we first open up the box, we can find the card in center, wrapped in protective material and near it, there is a little compartment with the extra bundle:



Besides the video card, inside the box we can also find a HDMI cable, a DVI to VGA converter, one Quick Installation Guide, two 6-pin PCI-Express to Molex (in case we do not have enough connectors on our power supply) and a CD with drivers and applications:



The Quick Installation Guide shows us in many languages which steps to take from installing the card into our computer till the driver installation:



The installation DVD has some tech demos, manuals and drivers for the video card:



If we remove the card from the protective bubble-bag, we can see that it is further wrapped in a transparent plastic bag:



On the back of the wrapped card we can find a sign which warns us that the inside contents are static sensitive and should not be handled by unauthorized personnel:

The card has very nice outside design; the central fan has the same color as the rest of the artwork and in center we can find one of the Sparkle logos:



One of the video card sides is designed to look like the front of a race car:



On one side of the fan we can see multiple sticker pieces, each one with a logo on it; the stickers do have a transparent protective film on them, which must be removed before the first use:



We can find on the other lateral of the fan another sticker with the Sparkle website address and some extra ventilation holes on the top of the plastic shroud:



The cooling solution has no less than 5 large heatpipes that help distribute the heat evenly on the heatsink; the plate that is on the GPU has the direct contact technology, meaning that the heatpipes touch directly the GPU HSF; because of this, in the future when we would like to change the thermal compound, we will have to apply much more than with other coolers because some of the compound will go between the pipes:



On the same side, but in the left corner, we can find two 6-pin PCI-Express connectors, which will provide the extra power the board needs when it is functioning:



The central fan is fixed onto a metallic frame and cools properly not only the GPU but also blows air on the memory and VRM:



Here is a lateral view of the cooling system; we can see the heatpipe terminations on the heatsink, but also the fan cable, which is 4-wire and tells us the fan is PWM:



On the back of the PCB, we can see that there are lots of unused holes (since this is a custom cooled design and the PCB is not modified). The only screws that we can find are the ones that are used to fix the heatsink:



The ventilation holes on the left of the PCB are from the original design, now are unused and we can see through them the fins from the new heatsink:



Each screw that fixes the heatsink has a spring on it:



The SLI connector can be also found on the board and we can run up to Quad SLI configurations:



The card has as outputs two DVI connectors and one mini-HDMI:

Test Setup and Extra Info

Test Setup

Stefan's Test Setup
CPU	Core i7 920 @ 3.2Ghz
Cooling	Cogage True Spirit
Mainboard	Asrock X58 Extreme
Memory	G.Skill F3-12800CL8T-6GBPI PI Series
VGA	AXLE GeForce 210 512MB DDR2 Gainward Geforce GTS 250 Deep Green Gainward Geforce GT240 Inno3D Geforce GT240 Sparkle Geforce GTS 250 LP ATI Radeon HD 4550 ATI Radeon HD 4890 ATI Radeon HD 5770 ATI Radeon HD 5830 ATI Radeon HD 5450 Sparkle Geforce GTX 470
Other	Power Supply : Antec True Power New 750W HDD : Seagate Barracuda 320GB 7200.10 Case : Cooler Master HAF922 Case with 2 NB-Multiframe S-Series MF12-S3HS@1800RPM on the side

With the help of the GPU-Z 0.4.4 utility, we can extract lots of information regarding the video card clocks,memory type, pixel and texture fill rate and so on:



I have used the Everest Ultimate Edition utility to find out the ATI PowerPlay pre-defined clocks and some more information regarding the GPU Code name, Part Number or BIOS Version:



To find out the IDLE and maximum temperatures, I have used the Furmark utility, with the Stability Test in “Xtreme Burning mode” and let it run for about 15 minutes. To record the temperatures, the GPU-Z utility was used, thanks to its Sensors monitoring tab. The recorded room temperature at the time of testing was 25.8 degrees Celsius:

IDLE



Full Load



After the 15 minutes have passed, the fan barely reached 49% and the cooling system remained at very decent sound levels; this tells us that the Sparkle cooling system can successfully cool the hot GTX 470.

Fan speeds



The Sparkle DVD comes with the drivers on it, the Adobe Reader 9 kit for people that do not have it and its needed to read the Quick Install Guide in electronic format, along with the Troubleshooting Guide; on the bottom of the Autorun menu, we can see that we can install the Design Garage, Supersonic Sled or Video Easy bundled applications:



Design Garage is a tech demo with incredible graphics that allows us to choose the car and scenery and create beauty-shots:



Supersonic Sled is another tech demo that uses PhysX, CUDA, DirectX 11. The demo straps a guy on a high powered test rocket and hurtles him down a six-mile long track in the Nevada desert, at speeds in excess of 800 miles an hour:




MAGIX Video Easy is the first video editing program for the whole family. It's so easy to use that even beginners without any prior skills will be able to design breathtaking videos in just a short time. Transform recordings of family celebrations, vacations, or special events into video DVDs or present your videos on the Internet with ease.



The 3DMark Vantage scores were calculated by summing up the GPU and CPU subscores.

Here are the Vantage subscores separately:

Synthetic Benchmarks

We first converted the obtained scores/FPS for each benchmark to a percentage in comparison to the highest score (=100%), we then averaged all the benchmark scores per resolution/IQ and the results are put into these charts. So these are relative performance charts in % to the fastest card. (full performance numbers here)






In the benchmarks without Antialiasing enabled, the GTX 470 from Sparkle manages to get ahead of the fastest video card with about 15%.





When we add 4xAA filtering, the difference increases only a bit, making the GTX 470 the fastest card tested yet.

Games Benchmarks

Same as on the previous page, we first converted the obtained scores/FPS for each benchmark to a percentage in comparison to the highest score (=100%), we then averaged all the benchmark scores per resolution/IQ and the results are put into these charts. So these are relative performance charts in % to the fastest card. (full performance numbers here)





In the games benchmarks without Antialiasing it seems that the difference between the previously fastest tested video card and the Sparkle 470 increases to an incredible 25%!





With 4xAA enabled, we have the same phenomenon like with the Synthetic Benchmarks. The performance difference increases, but only by a bit; however, the difference amount is amazing!

Conclusive Thoughts

NVIDIA’s Fermi generation has not been completely deployed yet, so far we’ve only seen the higher end of the product scale. The Sparkle GTX 470 is the 2nd fastest card in the Fermi family and doesn’t disappoint performance wise.

In our tests so far we were able to compare the GTX 470 to a slew of last generation video cards, and it’s quite clear from the results that NVIDIA delivered nicely performance wise with the new generation of video cards.

With the recent launch of both GTX 465 and 460 products NVIDIA is set deliver some interesting price/performance VGA cards. The Sparkle GTX 470 is not a budget product and has to compete with dual GPU cards from last generation as well as though competition from ATI with factory overclocked Radeon HD 5850 cards.

Sparkle’s latest video card does have the stock PCB but comes with a custom cooler, stress tests didn’t show any stability issues and temperature wise the new cooler handles the Fermi GPU without issue.

The bundle is a lot like the one from other manufacturers and contains the HDMI cable along with a DVI to VGA convertor, to be able to use fully the card outputs.

Priced between €288~300 (normal version) it lands in between HD 5850 and HD 5870 cards, while the newly launches GTX 460 is priced between €200-220. This custom card from Sparkle with new cooler if priced just right will offer quite a bit of competition for ATI's line-up. We did not get MSRP from Sparkle yet, but will update once we do obtain it.

UPDATE:Just got the information that the Sparkle GTX 470 with custom cooling has a MSRP of €349.99, a little more expensive than the stock cooled version.

The coming months we aim to add more video cards to our tests database, aiding our readers to make informed buying decisions. Currently the Sparkle Geforce GTX 470 sits at the top spot, but for how long? Time will tell.



I would like to thank again to Sparkle for making this review possible!