The Card Itself

The big stir that Hercules created with their Dynamite Ultra TNT2 was the high clock speeds that it came at. NVidia default for the Ultra is 150MHz for the core clock speed and 183MHz for the memory clock speed, but Hercules went with 175MHz core and 200MHz memory. They even committed to shipping their cards at this speed. However, they did not stop there. The TNT2 non-Ultra card that we have is clocked at 145MHz core and 170MHz memory. The default by nVidia for the TNT2 is 125MHz for the core and 150MHz for the memory. Again, Hercules is clocking their cards at a higher spec than default, by 16% on the core and 13.3% on the memory.

Keeping things frosty

The TNT2 that we got has a fan and heatsink on it, which we consider a nice touch considering that it's designated as the "lower" line. However, the heatsink and fan are not quite as good as the one that was found on the Ultra. The Ultra's fan is on the left, and the regular's is on the right:

   

However, that should be somewhat of a non-issue, as we've found that the TNT2s in general don't seem to get as hot as the older generation of chipsets, like the TNT specifically. The Dynamite TNT2, even when overclocked, did not get as hot as my good old TNT did while in normal operation. The addition of the heatsink and fan should further keep things frosty.

Tool Time with Tim

Yes folks, it's back. The infamous Hercumeter lives on, thankfully. For those of you joining us late, the "Hercumeter" is a little ol' utility that Hercules includes among its drivers. The function of this tool is for one thing, and one thing only: overclocking. The Hercumeter has two slider bars, one which controls core clock speed and one which controls memory clock speed. So for you to overclock the Dynamite TNT2, you just have to pull the slider-thingy to the setting that you wish to use. This particular Hercumeter differs in the range of speeds from the Hercumeter that came with the Dynamite Ultra. The core clock speed ranges from 125 to 200, whereas the Ultra's went from 150 to 200 (MHz). The memory clock speed ranges from 150 to 235, whereas the Ultra's went from 150 to 250 (MHz).

Other than the small difference in the range of the available speeds, the other stuff looks the same. There is still the basic tool which allows adjustment of color levels and gamma settings. Then there are the utilities that specifically alter settings for OpenGL and Direct3D. There is the tool that lets you see the information for the video subsystem. There is also the Monitune tool which lets you adjust monitor settings (mainly positioning of the screen) as well as refresh rate.

WinDVD

If you spend $5 more ($154.99), you will get the software DVD player, too. The one that Hercules is using is called WinDVD, and it is a good one. It is one of two software DVD players that uses hardware subpicture blending. Using it with your TNT2 will enable some of the cool little features like having subtitles and menus.