Date: March 20th, 2006
Article by: Joe Anderson (Hardware Reviewer)
Edited by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Head Editor)
Product was submitted by: Zalman USA
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PRODUCT INSTALLATION AND TESTING
This photo gives you some idea of just how compact this assembly is.
With the card back in the case, you can see that it may be possible to run the VF900-Cu in an SLI array. Not having the luxury of a second PCIe card to try, I can't state this with any certainty. Zalman clearly states, “…a PCI slot adjacent to the AGP (or PCIe) slot will become unusable.”
GPU temperature readings were taken via nVidia's nVMonitor software in my climate controlled testing facility (basement). Ambient temperature was a constant 21C with the following hardware:
- DFI Lanparty nF4 SLI-DR Expert Motherboard
- AMD Opteron 148 CPU @ 2.8 GHz.
- OCZ DDR 500 EL (1GB X 2) Memory
- OCZ PowerStream 520W SLI
- eVGA GeForce 7800GT-CO
- WD Raptor
- Windows XP Pro SP2
- Antec P160W chassis
Idle temperature was recorded after reboot and the system at desktop for 30 minutes. Load temperatures were recorded after three iterations each of AquaMark3 and 3Dmark05. The VF900-Cu was tested at both minimum and maximum fan settings. Just for grins, I also included the Zalman Fatal1ty VGA cooler. Results are as follows:
I must say that I'm impressed by these results! The VF900-Cu bested the stock cooler in all phases of testing. At it's lowest (and most quiet) fan setting the VF900-Cu posted a 9C drop from the stock cooler. This cooler, while posting similar idle temperatures as the Zalman Fatal1ty, really came into its own as load increased, besting the Fatal1ty by 4-5C. Even more impressive is the fact that the VF900-Cu performed at this level while remaining virtually silent, even at its highest fan speed.
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