Too early to tell...but the tech support is right there
Written: Nov 26 '99
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Excellent image quality, speed, state of the art.
Cons: Pricey, early in product cycle.
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| rpillala's Full Review: Hercules 3D Prophet |
I have to confess that I've been anticipating the GeForce based cards for some time now. I had ordered a Creative Labs card online and was getting tired of waiting. So when I saw this one at Best Buy, I just had to have it. There were no other GeForce cards on the shelf that day.
In retrospect, I am happy with Guillemot over other brands. Mainly this is because of my very positive experience with their tech people. My current configuration has a FIC SD-11 motherboard and an Adaptec AHA2940U2W SCSI card. Suffice it to say that when I tried to plug the Prophet into this configuration, the system hung. This was right after the RAM check and before any driver issues or anything. So I put my old video card back in and emailed Guillemot. Within one hour, they replied and within two hours I had a solution. This was on Thanksgiving Day, mind you. That's a positive experience. I have not had that kind of response from the larger companies like Creative and Diamond.
Anyone who plays a lot of 3D games (or just plays a 3D game a lot) knows that a good accelerator can make a big difference in the enjoyment of their games. I have tried it with Unreal Tournament and was stunned by the performance. I don't have numbers for it. The Nvidia TreeMark test which ran at a snail's pace on my TNT came in at 27 FPS with this card and my Athlon 500. I am anticipating speed increases with future drivers but that's just speculation. The card also has a TV-out, which provides output too blurry to write this review but quite nice for movies or games. The onboard movie acceleration is quite good, and the TV-Out even goes up to 800x600x24. I have not tried the included overclocking utility, but it has sliders for the core and memory speeds. The card does have a heatsink and fan, so it might not be a problem.
A decision between this and other non GeForce cards is for me trivial, except for the price. Since current games do not yet support the advanced features of this card (onboard Transformation and Lighting) it cannot hurt to wait before deciding to purchase one and further, which one to purchase. I rule out 3dfx cards because of their diminished image quality. I also considered a Savage2000 based card (a Diamond Viper II) and I might have been swayed had I seen one on the shelf.
I would recommend a larger monitor for this card (17" or more.) If you have a smaller monitor and are not considering a new one, this card would be a waste. You can get good speeds at suitable resolutions with a TNT or TNT2.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 249.95
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Epinions.com ID:
rpillala
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Member: Ravi Pillalamarri
Location: Huntingtown, MD
Reviews written: 14
Trusted by: 4 members
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