Sparkle has announced a new addition to its Geforce 8 series called Calibre P860. Sparkle's Calibre series always surprises us with something new, since Calibre high-end cards usually come with highly efficient TEC active cooler systems. This time it's not about cooling.
The card is based on an Nvidia G84 core that works at 630 MHz, about 90 MHz higher than the reference 540 MHz. It comes with 512 MB of GDDR3 clocked at 1620 MHz, again much higher then the reference 1400 MHz. Even the Shaders ended up overclocked to 1386 while, on the reference cards they work at 1180 MHz. These clocks are just below reference 8600 GTS clocks, which ended up clocked at 675/2000 Mhz and shaders at 1.45 GHz.
Sparkle showed an interesting thing at CeBit this year, a sub card that can show real time GPU temperatures or real time PCB temperatures on a 3-bit digital tube display. This little PCB is attached on top of the card and shows a current temperature which can be manually changed between °C/°F units. When it debuted at Cebit it was an interesting concept but we didn't believe that it will find its way to the market, at least not in the near future.
People with a window on their case should easily read the current temperature from that little PCB. This can be good for them.