Overview
The first glance at the card says only one thing.massive. This is by far the largest gaming video card I’ve seen, and for good reason, at 10.5″ long, 3 expansion slots tall, and weighing in at 2lb 7oz, it has to be the largest gaming card in the world.
A pair of 80mm fans is probably the most noticeable thing about the card. If nothing else, it should be capable of some serious airflow.
The fans blow on twin heatpipe coolers, which comprise much of the weight of the card. The coolers have copper bases and heatpipes, and aluminum radiators. I suppose that Zalman or someone could design a more elaborate cooling system, but this one should have the potential to eliminate the cooling problems plaguing the reference model.
The design of the cooler allows some of the exhaust air to exit from the rear of the case, but most of it will be blown into the case. That is unfortunate, but one of the problems with the reference cooler is the attempt to exhaust all of the air via the rear.
Covering most of the rear of the card is a large baseplate that doubles as a heatsink for the memory located there.
Power for the card is provided by one 6-pin and one 8-pin PCI-E connector.
The output setup is pretty wild, consisting of 1 x DVI, 1 x Sub-15, 1 x HDMI, and 1 x DisplayPort. If you didn’t know, DisplayPort is the future connector from video card to monitor.
The bundle is surprisingly small, consisting of a DVI(female)/HDMI(male) adapter and a Molex/PCI-E adapter. There were no Vista drivers included, but the card probably had been reviewed by someone else before me and the Vista drivers were inadvertently left out.
