The Card

Zalman's VNF 100 GPU cooler dominates the look of the card. It uses three heatpipes to move heat away from the GPU core to the back side of the PCB where it is dissipated in the big blue heatsink. Due to the cooler design the card will need two slots in your system. Please note that the "second" slot is directed toward the back side of the card not to the front, like on most other cards.


The card has two DVI ports, the most common output configuration today. I would have liked to see an HDMI port which could underline the media PC use of this card. Since an HDMI adapter is included, it makes no difference. Using the adapter on a DVI port will result in a normal HDMI + Audio output coming from the card. In case you need an analog port you can also use the included DVI adapter.
For HDMI Audio, NVIDIA requires you to feed an external audio source, for example from your motherboard's on-board audio, to the card via SPDIF cable (also included). AMD on the other hand has integrated a sound device inside their GPUs which is the easier solution for most users.


The card has no CrossFire connector, yet it does support CrossFire via the PCI-Express bus. Personally I don't see much potential in combining two of these cards, it is just much easier to get a higher performing card if you need that.



Here are the front and the back of the cards, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.