PC cooling giant Zalman has announced plans to enter the video card market with its line of AMD Radeon cards. Zalman video cards available will include the Zalman HD6870-H (Radeon HD 6000), Zalman HD6850-H (Radeon HD 6870) and Zalman HD6770-H (Radeon HD 6770).
Each Zalman video card will include two DVI ports plus a DisplayPort and HDMI connector. Zalman will use a dual-slot cooling fan for these cards, and I’m curious to see how well the cooling systems will perform relative to other cards given the Korean company’s famous reputation for quiet cooling. Everything else about the cards is fairly typical as well: PCI Express 2.1, HDMI 1.4, Microsoft DirectX 11, AMD Eyefinity, PowerPlay CrossFireX and HD3D technology.
At $190, the Zalman HD6870-H will feature the AMD ATI 6870 CPU clocked at 900MHz and 1024MB of 256-bit GDDR5 RAM. The Zalman HD-6850-H’s $168 price tag gets you a 6850 GPU at 775MHZ and the same RAM as the HD6870-H. Finally, the HD6770-H will boast a 6770 GPU with an 850MHz speed and 1024MB of 128-bit GDDR5 RAM for $124.
Bundled accessories with the Zalman video cards will include the typical adapters, driver discs and manuals. All models except the budget HD6770-H also come with CrossFire adapters.
Zalman is trying to diversify its offerings, but are these graphics cards really an innovation? I don’t think so. Zalman should try a little harder to make something different. Maybe the next series of Zalman video cards will be more unique?
There’s no word yet on a release date, but my guess is sooner rather than later.
Source | Overclockers.ua