Sparkle Calibre X450G
The second company in our comparison to use an Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo Pro cooler, Sparkle’s Calibre X450G also follows the same reference design circuit board with the same two dual-link DVI and mini-HDMI ports.
Sparkle employs a custom fan color to make its card appear different, and differentiates the installation kit with a six-foot mini-HDMI-to-full-HDMI cable, rather than an adapter. Whether the cable is worth more than an adapter depends on the length of cable you need, but it’s certain to save most desktop users a little money.
Sparkle’s version of Arctic Cooling’s sink also omits one of the heat pipes, and the complete card package also measures around 0.2” thinner. The difference in thickness could be due to a change in mounting hardware however, as the bottom of the cooling fins appear to sit closer to the card. We’ll welcome any space savings we can get in a three-slot graphics product!
The X450G appears to be 1 MHz faster than two of its competitors, but that might be a rounding error specific to this card. Sparkle rates it as 850 MHz, with GDDR5-3800 memory.
Much like the similar-appearing brand in today’s roundup, the X450G lacks vendor-specific overclocking software. Fortunately, it works with other, universal utilities. Sparkle adds several freeware demos and trial software.
