Introduction

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there were graphics card manufacturers that would go to lengths in order to sell the best cards. Canopus was one of them. Hercules was one as well, selling cards clocked beyond NVIDIA’s recommended specification to establish rapport with the upper echelon of hardware enthusiasts.

Times change, though, and manufacturers formerly devoted exclusively to the hardcore gaming market have had to reevaluate their niche positions or risk succumbing to the high-volume players. Hercules even transitioned away from NVIDIA and is selling cards based on ATI’s products. Nowadays, we see a lot of graphics cards with unique cooling solutions, extensive gaming bundles and attractive prices, but manufacturers are still reluctant to tweak performance settings. Perhaps Bruce Hornsby was right; that’s just the way it is.

R350 Takes Center Stage

The Hercules 3D Prophet 9800 PRO

Underside of the card

Most of the R300 and R350 cards we’ve seen have been standard fare with a few notable exceptions. Sapphire certainly made a splash with its Atlantis 9700 Pro Ultimate Edition that ran silently, and Tyan has implemented some interesting hardware monitoring features; but now its Hercules’ turn to make an impression. As much as we’d love to see enhanced clock frequencies, there can’t be too much headroom left in that 380MHz R350 core etched on a .15-micron process. Instead, Hercules has endowed a standard reference card with some catchy eye-candy sure to entice case modders. And in the process, the card has picked up some fairly fantastic overclocking potential.