Now as great as lower temperatures are, what every enthusiast truly cares about is how those lower temperatures transfer over into overclocking results. As maximum stable overclocking results can sometimes be subjective, we've enlisted the help of ATI Tool, a great little software utility that will automatically find the highest stable overclock on any ATI based video card.

As we all well know, higher clock speeds are worth nothing if your system crashes halfway through your game. The stock clocks on our 9800 Pro is 378/338.

Maximum Stable Overclock

Stock Cooler - 386/349

Zalman Silent Mode - 421/369

Zalman Performance Mode - 421/369

I'm not sure whether to happy or disappointed. It would seem that we maxed out 9800 Pro even at the lower fan speed. Though the core itself is cooler at the higher fan speed, we were unable to squeeze another stable Mhz out of our card. 

The good news is that the Zalman cooler was able to max out our 9800 Pro even at the lower fan speed! Cards with more headroom would definitely benefit from the performance fan speed. The fact that the core is cooler at the higher speed ensures that the core is in fact maxed out even at the lower fan speed.

Whether Zalman's lineup of VGA coolers are worth your money was never in question. We knew from our previous review of the AlCu model that the cooler is worth your money.  What is in question is whether or not it's worth that little bit extra to get the beefed up FS-V7 Fatal1ty model.

The answer to this question all you need to do is decide what your needs are.  If you want a cool and quiet video card cooler but have no plans for anything but a moderate overclock, than you might as well stick with the standard Zalman VF700 lineup.

If however, you are an enthusiast, a high end gamer looking to squeeze every last frame out of your video card without have to resort to expensive water cooling then the Fatal1ty FS-V7 is the perfect GPU cooler for you.

• Extreme Cooler
  
• Tinted Red Copper and Matching LED
  
• Easy Install
  
• 20C lower than stock cooler!

• Far from Silent in Performance Mode
  
• Lose a PCI slot

Page 1: Introduction Page 2: Installation Page 3: Overclocking; Conclusion