GeForce GTS 250 Roundup (ASUS, Gigabyte, Sparkle, EVGA)

Sparkle Calibre GTS 250 512MB X250

Manufacturer Product Page: CalibreStyle
Product Number: X250
Warranty: 3 Years
Price: Pricing at Newegg (official Sparkle Retailer in Canada)


Not many of you who are reading this roundup will be familiar with neither Sparkle nor their performance-oriented Calibre lineup but let me tell you: their box design is inspiring. Instead of using the usual (and somewhat boring) rectangular box with a glossy surface, Sparkle decided to bevel the box’s side and then add a textured checkerboard pattern to the finish. There is also a small tag clipped onto the box’s handle giving actual specifications (finally!!) and some performance figures. All in all, this has the look of an extremely high-end product.


While the luscious design of the exterior gives way to a drab interior packaging scheme, but that doesn’t take away any of our initial great impressions of this product. Why? Because along with the more than adequate protection afforded the card itself, the list of accessories is excellent. You get a pair of Molex to 6-pin adaptors, an S/PDIF cable and a card which describes the warranty along with the Calibre division’s commitment to customer service excellence. I know that it might sound a bit corny, but this warranty card is a welcome addition considering the hoops customers have to jump through to simply determine the length of some manufacturers’ warranties.


Even though custom cards seem to be one of the themes of this roundup, I have to say that the Calibre X250 impressed me the most when I first removed it from the box. First of all, it is quite heavy due to the design of the cooler in addition to the copious amounts of aluminum used for the memory and VRM heatsinks (more on these later). The PCB is a wonderful black that works perfectly with well with the packaging design and acts as the perfect compliment to the copper heatsink.


The heatsink Sparkle used on this card can be taken as a lesson in design and engineering excellence. It features a pair of long and thick continuous heatpipes which run underneath the core contact plate and move the core’s heat to a series of individual copper fins. For those of you wondering; yes, the fins are pure copper instead of the usual plated aluminum we are used to seeing. The fins are alternately cooled by a pair of fans which have their speed controlled based on the temperature of the core. There is also a battle-axe looking affair with the Calibre name and logo which may look like plastic on the picture but it is in fact a piece of laser-cut aluminum. High quality stuff indeed.

The only thing that bothers me about this setup is that the copper fins are so small. More surface area means better cooling and these things are just small slivers when compared to some other setups in this roundup. It will be interesting to see how this impacts cooling performance.


The heatsink on the X250 has one more unique feature: the ability to pivot its two sections to form a “V” shape. Getting this to happen is a simple matter of pushing together a pair of tabs located at the end of each fan and gradually lifting until the supports move into the upper hole of the main retention bracket. It then locks into place.

Is there any point to all of this? According to Calibre, propping up the cooler like this allows the fans to move more air due to an elimination of obstructions below the fins and the VRM heatsink will also benefit from additional airflow. What do we think about it? Calibre’s claims do hold some merit and it is great to see people without space to spare can use the cooler in its compact position while others can take advantage of additional cooling by lifting the fin assemblies. We will test both configurations in the Temperature Testing section.


Unlike the other manufacturers in this roundup, Sparkle decided to install heatsinks on all of the memory modules. Even though the benefit of ramsinks is debatable, it is great to see them going this extra mile. In the background of the picture on the left you can also see that the cast aluminum contact plate has some additional round “fins” in order to disperse any heat not taken care of by the heatpipes.

The back end of the X250 features some seriously massive solid state capacitors as well as a large heatsink over the VRM modules. This card looks like it was built for overclocking.


This card comes with a full compliment of two PCI-E 6-pin connectors which is more fitting with the outgoing 9800 GTX+ rather than the GTS 250. The additional power connector may have been installed to improve overclocking stability but the more likely explanation is that this card is simply a 9800 GTX+ with a flashed BIOS. There is also an S/PDIF header for audio pass-through.

The backplate offers a great selection output options with a HDMI connector, a VGA output and finally a DVI connector.


The overall length of the Sparkle Calibre X250 is 9.5” which makes it slightly shorter than a reference 9800 GTX+.