Graphics Cards for Every Budget

Once installed, I ran the usual benchmark gauntlet. With the color depth set to 16-bit, the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 didn't come close to matching the pure speed of a GeForce2 GTS board. Interestingly, things changed as soon as I kicked the display into 32-bit color. At every tested screen resolution (from 800 x 600 up to 1600 x 1200), the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 checked in at just a few frames per second short of the GeForce2 GTS. And when I say a few frames per second short, I'm talking about no more than a 5fps gap between the two boards.

To clean up the jagged edges on screen, the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 supports 2X and 4X FSAA. Because the KYRO II uses supersampling to smooth lines, the card takes a large performance hit with FSAA enabled. To keep frame rates from dropping too much, Guillemot imposes a 1280 x 1024 limit on the 2X mode and 1024 x 768 on the 4X mode. Impressively, the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 performs almost as well as the GeForce2 GTS with both 2X and 4X FSAA enabled. In fact, the KYRO II-based card even pulled ahead of the GeForce2 GTS board at lower resolutions with a 32-bit color depth.

But as far as 3-D splendor goes, that's about it. Because the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 doesn't support DirectX 8.0 features, the card can't handle the advanced effects found with other GPUs. And that's a problem because the future of 3-D gaming is in DirectX 8.0. The Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 might be able to push polygons faster than any other budget card, but that really won't mean much as games start to require features that the KYRO II GPU doesn't have.

For the film geeks, the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 supports motion compensation to assist with DVD playback. Unfortunately, it's not a full hardware MPEG-2 decoding implementation, and the lack of TV-out means you'll have to watch movies on your monitor. If you're dead-set on outputting your movies to a TV, Guillemot ships a version of the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 with TV-out for $169.

If speedy frame rates in your current games is the only thing you're concerned about, the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 is a decent solution-but only if you want to spend the bare minimum to get the 3-D experience. By embracing the KYRO II GPU, Guillemot effectively brings last year's high-end gaming performance to the mainstream. The only significant knock against the card lies in its older architecture: The card can't support a T&L engine and DirectX 8.0. By buying into technology that can't handle complex T&L routines, your shiny new graphics card might have a shorter life span than you thought. Ultimately, budget graphics cards are built around compromises, but recommending the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 is hard (even with its exceptional performance) when you can pick up a GeForce3 Ti 200-based card for only a few dollars more.

The Moral: Features Before Performance
So what have we learned? For one thing, you get what you pay for. Also, specifications are occasionally irrelevant to the true performance of a graphics card. In the end, you should base your buying decision on the features you want, rather than going on performance alone. If you prefer real-time strategy games, Diablo clones, or the current flavors-of-the-month such as Counter-Strike and you don't anticipate playing 3-D games that take advantage of DirectX 8.0, you're better off buying a more inexpensive card—such as the Xtasy GeForce4 MX 440 or Hercules 3D Prophet 4500—that has value-added features, rather than purchasing a true GeForce4-based card. If you're a performance junkie who salivates at the prospect of games leveraging programmable shaders to provide realistic effects such as water and leaves, you'll want the best GPU technology available—and that's the GeForce4. If you're a home theater maven who wants the best in DVD output and a powerful DirectX 8.0-compliant GPU, the RADEON 8500 is the card for you.

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