Zalman to Enter Graphics Card Market With AMD GPUs
by Kristian Vättö on December 8, 2011 7:00 PM ESTOverclockers.ua has leaked slides which strongly suggest that Zalman will soon be entering the graphics card market. Zalman is mostly known for their coolers and their CPU coolers are one of the most popular ones at NewEgg; they also sell power supplies and SSDs. At least initially, Zalman will be AMD's partner. The slides have only AMD 6870, 6850 and 6770 listed, but it's possible that we will see more models when this becomes official. Here is a table of the GPUs.
| Specifications of Zalman's Graphics Card Lineup | |||
| Model | HD6870-H | HD6850-H | HD6770-H |
| GPU | AMD 6870 | AMD 6850 | AMD 6770 |
| Stream Processors | 1120 | 960 | 800 |
| Texture Units | 56 | 48 | 40 |
| ROPs | 32 | 32 | 16 |
| Core Clock | 900MHz | 775MHz | 850MHz |
| Effective Memory Clock | 4200MHz | 4000MHz | 4800MHz |
| Memory (GDDR5) | 1GB | 1GB | 1GB |
| Memory Bus Width | 256-bit | 256-bit | 128-bit |
| Price | $190 | $168 | $124 |
The cards are all running at stock frequencies. Zalman is well known for their cooling solutions, and we expected their GPUs to have a beefier cooler and possibly be overclocked as well. To be honest, the cards look vapid. The cooler design is very reference and there are plenty of cards with similar designs, for example the HIS 6850 Fan. That is not to say the cooling system is bad, it's just nothing special.
There are already plenty of AMD board partners so succeeding requires you to be different, usually either in price or cooling performance. Given the prices, Zalman isn't competing in that category, which leaves them with cooling performance. Zalman definitely has the experience in cooling systems, including GPU coolers, and hopefully we will see some products that are more innovative from them in the future.
Shipments are set to start next Tuesday, December 13th.
Source: Overclockers.ua via TechPowerUp
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vailr - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
MSI's Cyclone Radeon 6850 looks to me to have a quieter cooling solution:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Price appears to be the same as the equivalent Zalman card.
8steve8 - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
ive been ignoring pci-e graphics for a year now, waiting for 28nmPenti - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
Who will manufacture Zalmans boards then, I guess Foxconn or other contract manufacturer who already do it for others. No passive boards lined up there either.hcforde - Wednesday, February 29, 2012 - link
They sell monitors and 3Ddrivers right?