[AlbertB]

Hi,

I've just come into an old Hercules 3D Prophet II Ultra 64MB (NVidia chips I believe) at a very good price, (the best price of all ), but I have no experience of this card at all. I'm obviously wondering whether it would be a better card to use than my ATI Rage Fury Pro/Xpert 2000 32MB card. This assumes that Win2K drivers are available for the Hercules of course.

Does anyone have any info they can offer?

(edit: Win2k drivers just downloaded from Hercules site.)

 

[active95]

Compare with the ATI Rage hands down it's a whole lot better. It's still a Geforce II card, using the reference design ( the last card made by Hercules before going bankcrupt was the TNT II , if i'm not mistaken) so don't expect to be able to run the lastest games on it ( well you can , but it will look ugly).
Anyways if you want to take a look , here's a review for you http://www.activewin.com/reviews/hardware/graphics/hercules/3dprophetIIultra/index.shtml
HTH

 

[AlbertB]

Thanks for the advice Active.

I have to admit I'm not a gamer at all, (unless you class my only dabble, F/A-18E Super Hornet, a game and I don't! ), but I do a little intensive graphics work as part of my job and the idea of a better card did appeal. It was lying around at work and I was asked if I wanted it for free, so I naturally said yes and walked away a happy man.

I read in a revue that the drivers from NVidia are now better than the Hercules ones can you comment on that at all? Failing that I now have the latest (?) Hercules items as I mentioned so I will give it a try I think.

 

[active95]

Sure... since so much time had passed which the card and drivers saw the light of day , of course the latest Nvidia drivers will perform much better then the original Hercules one. And on top of that Hercules went out of business and were bought by the french ( Guillemot) hence Guillemot will use Nvidia drivers ( well since all the cards based on the Nvidia chip are basically "clones" there is no need to try and get some " optimized for that particular card " drivers, if you catch my drift )
So install the lastest Nvidia drivers ( i believe now they are 56.XX ) and enjoy the card.
Oh you mention something about " intensive graphic works". I hope you're not referring to CAD, since the card was not made for CAD ( then again you got free.. )

 

[AlbertB]

Just a quick update Active.

The Hercules card is in and running. I think I can say at this stage that it is a step up from the ATI card as you suggested. I am using drivers downloaded from Hercules site, (40.41), but I do have an alternative set from NVidia, (56.72), which I may try when I get bored. Apparently overclocking is not an option with this card! Shouldn't affect me as I'm not a hardened gamer and even the ATI board has been capable of just about everything I have asked it to do.

Thanks again.

 

[active95]

Appreciate the follow_up ( if u would only know how many folks forget to do that ) AlbertB.
At this stage i guess follow the old saying " if it ain't broken , don't fix" . In other words if you are happy how the card performs stick with the Hercules drivers. If you run into problems you can always update them to 56.XX one.

 

[StillLearnin']

Here's links for Detonator driver removal and tweaker programs for your card:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=603

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download583.html

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download387.html

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download737.html

 

[AlbertB]

Gottit StillLearnin', thanks!

 

[brite750]

Boy I wish they'd hand out free graphics cards at my job.

 

[AlbertB]

But I bet you get wages instead Brite!