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SPARKLE launches surprise GeForce solution for those without PCIe x16

by Parm Mann on 15 October 2008, 12:52

Tags: 8400GS PCIe x1, Sparkle

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Taiwan's SPARKLE Computer company today announced a new range of graphics cards that promise to bring high-end features such as Shader Model 4.0 and NVIDIA's PureVideo HD technology to generic PCs.

The surprise upgrade solution comes in the form of an NVIDIA GeForce 8400GS graphics card equipped with a PCIe x1 interface, as opposed to the common PCIe x16.

SPARKLE states that the card offers upgrade possibilities for generic PCs, as well as providing a budget-gaming solution for users with only PCIe x1 slots available.

The card offers a core frequency of 567MHz and 256MB or 512MB of DDR2 memory clocked at 900MHz. SPARKLE is so confident in the card's appeal that it's offering eight different models - each providing varying amounts of memory and a choice of passive or active cooling.

It could have its uses, and certainly provides a budget solution for users looking to add a second graphics card for a multi-monitor setup. No word on pricing yet, but expect availability soon.

Official press release: SPARKLE Presents GeForce 8400 GS PCI Express x1 Graphics Cards

HEXUS Forums :: 5 Comments

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Posted by Funkstar - Wed 15 Oct 2008 13:07
How would this compair performance wise to a Quadro NVS 290? and do they come with low profile brackets?

Yes the Quadros are expensive, but they ae already available in PCIe 1x versions and can be low or full profile.
Posted by Steve - Wed 15 Oct 2008 15:13
It amazes me how many motherboards that aren't SLI/CrossFire geared have a 16x PEG slot, then maybe one or two 1x PCIe slots… there are cards that require 4x or 8x (my RAID card, for example).
Posted by miniyazz - Sat 18 Oct 2008 14:35
Funkstar
How would this compair performance wise to a Quadro NVS 290? and do they come with low profile brackets?

Yes the Quadros are expensive, but they ae already available in PCIe 1x versions and can be low or full profile.

The Quadros are ‘professional’ graphics cards. Unlike the 8400, which is a gaming card and therefore optimised to render as many polygons (or whatever) as possible each fraction of a second while maintaining the fps, the Quadro series is optimised to finish rendering the polygons with no regard to fps, as accurate pictures rather than fps are required. That is how I understand it, anyway. So even a high end Quadro card costing over £1000 will do worse in games than a mid-high end gaming graphics card costing £150-200, so for games I would go for the PCI-E x1 8400 every time.
That is how I understand it anyway!


Steve
It amazes me how many motherboards that aren't SLI/CrossFire geared have a 16x PEG slot, then maybe one or two 1x PCIe slots… there are cards that require 4x or 8x (my RAID card, for example).


There are few expansion cards requiring x4 or x8 PCIe slots, and these will work in x16 slots. In contrast, there are lots of things taking x1 slots - sound cards and physics cards, as well as many sata controllers. I guess motherboard manufacturers figure there's little point in putting a x4 or x8 slot in when they could put in a x16 slot, which all graphics cards these days (bar this 8400GS!) use (forgetting about PCIe 2.0 for the moment).
Besides, my motherboard (the Asus P5Q Pro) comes with a x16 and a x8 slot. Both are the same length: this is so I can fit a secondary graphics card (which I have), using just x8 bandwidth. My understanding of their logic is that the PCI-e controller is unable to handle the bandwidth of two PCIe x16 slots, but for most applications x8 bandwidth is sufficient, even for x16 graphics cards.
Posted by Steve - Sat 18 Oct 2008 14:41
miniyazz
There are few expansion cards requiring x4 or x8 PCIe slots, and these will work in x16 slots. In contrast, there are lots of things taking x1 slots - sound cards and physics cards, as well as many sata controllers. I guess motherboard manufacturers figure there's little point in putting a x4 or x8 slot in when they could put in a x16 slot
You miss my point. Where do I put my graphics card if I put my RAID controller in the only 16x slot?

1x isn't even enough for a single SATA 3Gbps channel - it's lucky no hard drive gets anywhere near that except when bursting.
Posted by miniyazz - Sat 25 Oct 2008 10:21
Steve
You miss my point. Where do I put my graphics card if I put my RAID controller in the only 16x slot?

Fair enough. But I suppose, generally, the people sufficiently tech savvy to be using RAID controllers will have chosen a motherboard with sufficient bandwidth for all the cards they'll be using, while for the majority of users having multiple expansion slots is a waste of money since they'll just sit there gathering dust.

Steve
1x isn't even enough for a single SATA 3Gbps channel - it's lucky no hard drive gets anywhere near that except when bursting.

True, but in real-world settings it's sufficient for two hard drives maxing out - the only exceptions might be the newest generation of SSDs and when solely reading/writing from/to HDD cache, which (I may be wrong) is unlikely to happen much since (I imagine) most people would have their primary HDD direct into the motherboard, and using the onboard RAID controller if they needed RAID with the OS.
Still, not enough for RAIDs with more than two cards, certainly.