Concluding thoughts
It's a little difficult to fully evaluate the Hercules 3D Prophet 9600. On the one hand, it's superbly constructed with consummate attention to detail, small PCB size and quiet fan. However, these virtues cannot take away from the fact that it's clocked at 325MHz core and 400MHz DDR RAM, exactly how a standard ATi 9600 should be. We have little problem in the card's specifications as more card variations are always welcome, but the stumbling block has to be the 256MB of memory. Sure, this isn't super-duper TinyBGA memory that's going to cost an arm and a leg, but it isn't cheap. We would have to manually engineer a situation where the extra 128MB of RAM, over and above a normal 9600's compliment, would be useful. It seems to add to the cost but does precious little for present performance. We've also got no doubt that 256MB will become standard on future cards; the question is whether it really necessary on what is widely considered to be a budget / midrange VPU ?.
The performance exhibited by the 3D Prophet is largely in line with expectations, if those expectations fully cater for the lack of comparative VPU and memory speed. Early pricing puts this card at around the £130 mark, which isn't entirely bad. We feel as if Hercules and ATi have had to bring 256MB-equipped cards to market in order to counter the 256MB FX 5200 / 5600 cards from NVIDIA. Big number sell, it really is as simple as that. Joe Public will, we reckon, be far more dazzled by 256MB of memory than, say, an extra 75MHz core and 200MHz memory. That's exactly why we see it emblazoned on the front cover.
The Hercules 256MB 3D Prophet 9600 isn't a bad card at all. It'll impress most onlookers if you choose to run the supplied DX9 demos, and it also produces reasonable scores in our benchmarks. We just feel as if the 256MB model is unwarranted, especially in view of the card's stunted pixel-pushing and bandwidth power. The 9600 Pro and FX 5600 128MB cards are clearly faster in every department and cost little more. That's the knowledge which stops us from recommending this particular card. Hercules has done an excellent job with a product that's going to find it difficult in marketplace where buyers know exactly how each card fares. It'll, however, do well in OEM systems where 256MB is the all-important selling point. There's better 'value' to be had elsewhere, but if you really, really need a 256MB 9600 Pro, this one sure looks the part.
Highs
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Super construction and looks
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Great 2D at every resolution
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DX9 compliance. Great for demos ;)
Lows
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256MB of on-board memory is a little gimmicky on a card that just can't make use of it
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~ £130 can buy you more performance than exhibited here
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No games in this bundle and no VGA-to-DVI converter
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Hercules' cards are often priced higher than other partners' cards
