Sparkle 8600GT with extremely slow memory clock (540/600).HELP please

[tnguyen1au]

I have just bought a Sparkle Geforce 8600 GT (SF-PX86GT512U2-HP) for AU $135.

SPARKLE Computer


I found out that Sparkle fits a very slow DDR2 memory on this card.

GPU-z reported:
Gpu = 540 MHz (That's fine)
Memory = 300 MHz (?!!!!!!)
shader = 1188 MHz (That's fine)

RivaTuner , AtiTool and GPU-z all reported that the memory clock of this card only runs at 300Mhz (Which means x2=600MHz?), compared to other brands' 8600GT cards .Their memory clock all runs at around 1.4GHz-1.6GHz range (the Gigabyte GV-NX86T512H) for example.

How come a 8600GT card runs at 600 MHz memory clock spds?
My old 6600GT at least have 1000MHz memory clock speed.

Strange thing on Sparkle web site is that they do report the memory clock speed of their DDR3 range of 8600GT but said nothing about the 8600GT DDR2 memory clock speed?

I read a lots about memory clock of other brands of 8600GT on the net and I never saw such a slow memory clock like this card. Did I miss something? Maybe I interpretate the clock speed wrongly?

How come there are so many different memory clock speeds for 8600GT, this did not happen with 6600GT? Confusion!

Video Card Comparison - GPUReview.com


If you have a Sparkle 8600GT card with 512 MB DDR2 please check for me with Rivatuner, ATiTool or GPU-z to see if it reports
memory clock at 300MHz or not.

I wonder how much performance hit the Sparkle card would suffer
compared to other high memory clock frequency DDR3 card if it is only 600MHz to start with?

I am very sad as I paid high price ($AU 135)for a card which has a lowest memory clock of the series.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Thanks and regards,

[tcsenter]

GDDR2 is slower than GDDR3 and amounts to a significant performance decrease on cards that can utilize the additional memory bandwidth (which 8600GT can).

1.4GHz ~ 1.6GHz cards are all GDDR3, with actual memory frequencies of 700MHz to 800MHz.

[tnguyen1au]

Yes, I feel so sad, the memory bandwith of this card is only 9.6 GB/s compared to 26 GB/s for other DDR3 8600GT cards.
Even my old 6600GT (which I upgraded from) has higher bandwidth (16.00GB/s)than this pathetic Sparkle card.
The problem is the store refused to refund nor let me to exchange the card, stating that because it is not a faulty card.