Introduction

When I heard that Zalman was entering the video card market I honestly didn't find myself all that surprised. One of the main features that make video cards stand out from each other is the cooling solution companies opt for and with a long standing presence in the cooling market, it shouldn't be hard for Zalman to offer something that can stand out against the competition.

We've been impressed with what Zalman has offered in the past, but what happens when the company moves away from the cooler only business and throws a video card into the mix, a bundle and all that other related stuff?

Well we intend to find out, but there's as always a few things that we've got to do before we get up and running. The first thing we've got to do is check out the package that Zalman is offering us. Once we've done that we'll move onto the video card itself and see what exactly is going on with it.

We'll check out the specification side of things before we move into the testbed and then of course look at the performance of the new video card. One of the main things we'll no doubt be paying attention today is the cooling performance so that's something that we're looking forward to seeing.

First things first, though, let's see what's going on with the package here today.

Package

Looking at the box there's not a whole heap going on, Zalman really have a very basic design. That's not a bad thing as on a whole the box design looks pretty nice with the giant Z in the middle, but there's not a wealth of information on offer. Of course the one feature that is highlighted quite strongly on the front of the box is the fact that a "Zalman Cooling Solution" is being used. We'd be a bit worried if it wasn't!

As for the bundle it's really small, so small that we don't even have a manual. We've simply got a driver CD, CrossFire bridge and DVI to VGA connector. We're not surprised by the small bundle, it's similar from most companies these days and we know that the main thing that Zalman want to highlight is the cooler.

So with that said let's take a closer look at the video card itself.