Introduction

We’ve just received the latest baby from Hercules, the 3D Prophet 4500 64 MB. Founded in 1982, Hercules has created among other things, the monochrome graphic standard. Over years the brand has focused on making top quality products that answer customers’ needs, and has been bought by Guillemot Corporation in November 1999. Guillemot Corporation is a French hardware manufacturer that has a strong establishment in Europe along with a very good reputation. Since this acquisition, Hercules is back in the front scene, and is becoming one of the favorite graphic card makers among hard-core gamers, thanks to its blue touch. The new 3D Prophet 4500 64 MB graphic card from Hercules is the first one to be built around a brand new GPU known as Kyro II that once isn’t manufactured by nVidia! To speak frankly Hercules astonished everyone from journalists to IT specialists when they announce a few months ago the introduction of this new product on the market. While everyone thought that nVidia was ruling the 3D graphic market, from mainstream to high end products, a new competitor has just appeared and seriously threatens nVidia’s supremacy, at least on the mainstream & mid-range market. Indeed until now they were really few alternatives for hard core gamers to nVidia based products, since 3dfx was bought back by the 3D chips giant last year. Except ATI with its Radeon, no other solution was able to compete with nVidia chips. A new page has been turned in the 3D graphic market with the release of the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 64 MB. Is all the hype around the 3D Prophet 4500 64 MB justified? We’ll see that in this review.

The Card

    As usual with Hercules the 3D Prophet 4500 64 MB features a nice blue PCB. In the centre of the board you’ll remark the GPU that is surmounted by a powerful blue orb heatsink teamed up with a fan to ensure the cooling of the processor. This new baby comes with 64 MB (divided in 8 chips of 8Mb each) of 5 nanoseconds 128-bit synchronous SDRAM and uses an AGP 2x connector (exit the benefits of the AGP 4x). With that kind of memory you can easily overclock the GPU up to 200MHz. Anyway doing so isn’t recommended as it can result in erratic operations and can damage the card. In terms of output, the card offers only one VGA connector (do not search for any TV-Out or DVI output), however this isn’t a major drawback since the card is primarily dedicated to the mainstream, mid-range market as said before. Notice that there's a 3D Prophet 4500 version with a TV out connector that shares the same PCB than the standard version.

Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 64MB (click to enlarge)

3D Prophet 4500 64MB Cooling System