This thing is HOT!
Written: Jun 28 '00 (Updated Jul 13 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Absolutely screams! Framerates are through the roof
Cons: Pricey, especially as an upgrade
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| Dave70968's Full Review: Hercules 3D Prophet |
As a college student, I am required to play computer games for a certain number of hours every day (23). I had been playing them on my laptop, and doing so successfully (see my review on the Dell Inspiron 7000), but I felt I was missing something. I finally broke down and decided to build myself a desktop system, optimized for gaming. I actually decided to build it at the beginning of December. I started looking at hardware reviews, trying to find the ultimate gaming components. When I heard about the nVidia geForce 256 chipset, I decided to delay building the computer until it was out and available in the mainstream. Good decision.
I first bought a Creative Annihilator3D (see review); I kept it for about three weeks, then sold it to a friend to buy a Guillemot Prophet DDR. (I had originally planned to buy the DDR, but couldn't find it available when I was looking, so just bought the Creative in the interim.) After I put the DDR card in my system, all I could say was WOW! I was running Quake 3: Arena at 1024x768, 32 bit color, 32 bit textures, all options at the highest quality, etc. at around 70 frames per second in the frametest mode. Couple that with my Princeton Graphics AGF900 19" monitor (yeah, I reviewed that, too...) and you have an incredible game machine. With the latest nVidia reference drivers (as of 27-Jun-2000), I was able to bring the resolution up to 1280x1024, with all of the other options still at their highest settings, and still maintain over 60 frames per second.
This graphics card is the most powerful I have ever seen in a consumer device (as I write this, I'm sitting next to a Silicon Graphics O2 workstation, connected to an SGI Onyx2 with 8 InifinteReality2 graphics pipes feeding an ImmersaDesk, a 5'x4' immersive-reality 3D display terminal...Scientific Visualization machine, not even close to consumer level). I haven't messed with the geForce 2 yet, and really don't want to--I've heard that it is even better, and I can't afford the upgrade I know I would want. But you certainly can't go too far wrong with this card. Expensive, yes, but if you are a serious user (gamer, or any other high-load 3D process), you will love it.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 259
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Epinions.com ID:
Dave70968
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Member: Dave Buckles
Location: Norman, OK
Reviews written: 16
Trusted by: 6 members
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