Sparkle have succeeded to manufacture a video card that has both high performance and low profile format, to fit a lot of media center cases. To be able to keep the GPU core within reasonable temperature limits with the stock cooling, the frequencies of the memory and the GPU have been reduced:

However, even with these clocks reduced, it has succeeded to surpass the GT240 performance by a large margin. Playing most of the games cannot be a problem if we also do have a dual core or quad core in our media center, at 1280×1024 and 1600×1200, with or without antialiasing.

Playing full HD video has not been a problem either, because of the power of the GTS250 GPU.

I would recommend to put this video card in a well ventilated case, to avoid overheating or GPU throttling.
I would like to add something that I would like to see in the next version of this video card from Sparkle:

• since this is a low profile video card, it should have been shipped with a low profile bracket also, because it’s not very easy to find a separate one in specialized shops
• most of the cards I have tested and seen in the past did also have a D-SUB connector; this would be a nice add for people that do not want to invest in a HDMI cable and want to use the D-SUB cable that came in their TV box, as a bundle
• cooling could be also be improved a little, because I’ve seen that in the FurMark stress test, the video card reaches the maximum threshold temperature after 10 minutes or so. For those who ask, the threshold temperature is set to 105 degrees Celsius, in the board BIOS.

I would like to thank again to Sparkle for sending me this video card for review!

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• READ MORE (Source): PCShopTalk – SPARKLE GeForce GTS250 Series SXS2501024D3L-NM Video Card