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To test today we are using our long standing Core i7 970 system, which is overclocked. We have a variety of hardware benchmarked on this system this year which will make for an interesting market comparison.
It is worth reiterating that the Sparkle GTX650 OC is less than £90, some of the cards in our market comparison cost well over five times the price.
Main Test System:
Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.6ghz
Graphics: Sparkle GTX650 OC Dragon Series
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Memory: 6GB ADATA @ 2133mhz 9-10-9-32
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)
Monitor: Dell U3011.
Comparison Cards:
KFA2 GTX680 LTD OC
Asus GTX680
Asus GTX670 Direct CU II TOP
Gigabyte GTX 660 Ti OC Windforce
MSI GTX 660 OC Edition Twin Frozr
Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition
HD7970 GHZ Edition
HD7970
Sapphire HD7950 Vapor-X Edition (@950mhz core clock)
HD7950
Sapphire HD7870 Overclock Edition
HD7870
HD7850
HD6990 (880 core)
HD6970
HD6950
HD6870
Sapphire HD7770 Vapor X Overclock Edition
XFX HD7770 Black Edition S CFx
HD7770 CFx
HD7770
Sapphire HD7750 Ultimate Edition
HD6790
HD6770
HD6670
GTX590 SLi
GTX590
GTX580 SLi
GTX580
GTX570
Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
Games:
Alien V Predator
Tom Clancy HAWX 2
Resident Evil 5
Far Cry 2
F1 2011
Total War: Shogun 2
Battlefield 3
Elder Scrolls V: SkyRim
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.
Seems like a decent card for the money. good for a media center, but may they will bring out a single slot version.
Its a good point, I remember when a low end card struggled to get good frame rates at 1280×1024.
> 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.
This might be about to change with the release of AMD’s desktop trinity parts (rumoreded for the 1st of October)
I would really like to see this card tested at more appropriate resolution and details. Its a $100 card its not meant to push 8AA@fullhd res.
The fact it can though is pretty incredible ! I was amazed to see it can cope with many engines at 1080p. I dont know anyone who games at 720p anymore anyway. but you can be sure it will cope with it if it can at 1080p