Rating: 
Summary: Best at high resolutions
Review: Running any Kyro II card at less that high resolution and 32bit colour is a total waste. The card has pathetic figures and really only shines at 1024x768 or higher. If you don't have at least a 17" monitor, don't bother, a Voodoo1 can beat this card at 640x480.
The price is low, but the card easily beats the best GeForce2 at high resolutions mainly because it only sends the card the info it actually needs to put on screen, not hidden detail like barrels behind others.
Rating:
Summary: I have seen many glowing reviews!
Review: Since every review here is glowing (because we all have 300 Wat Power Supply) everyone should buy this!
Rating:
Summary: The Best Bang for the Buck !!!!!
Review: The card is amazing, it runs todays(Note That) most played games, Unreal Tournament, Quake III etc. at very high framerates, hell it even gives the GeForce 2 GTS a run for it's money but fails just short because it has no integrated T & L engine, which most of the newer games are going to use (Unreal 2, Max Payne, Giants; Citizen Kabuto, Nascar Racing 4 and a few more). Although it runs the games good snd at decent framerates (mostly depends on your system) it doesn't have that long of a shelf life, just because that mistake. Better than the GeForce 2 MX. The card has a 175Mhz Core Speed, 64MB SD or DDR RAM (Don't Remember). If your looking for an excellent card that performs for a cheap price look no further. Let the 3D Prophet show you the way !!!
Rating:
Summary: Best economical graphics card out there!
Review: This card blows away any of the low end Geforce2 cards by far! Best if ran by 1024x768, but even lower than that runs perfectly with FSAA.
Rating:
Summary: Great card, great price!
Review: This is, in my opinion, THE video card to buy for the budget gamer. I've been using it for about three months now, and still have yet to find anything it won't do except a few tests on 3DMark2001. For a fraction of the price of a GeForce3, it does everything with speed and quality that rival its higher-priced competitor. Benchmarks on it may come out significantly lower, but in my experience real-life results are excellent. If you want to play Max Payne with all the settings turned up and have a bottomless pocketbook you should go for a different card, but for everyone else I highly recommend this one!
Rating:
Summary: Great card, great price!
Review: This is, in my opinion, THE video card to buy for the budget gamer. I've been using it for about three months now, and still have yet to find anything it won't do except a few tests on 3DMark2001. For a fraction of the price of a GeForce3, it does everything with speed and quality that rival its higher-priced competitor. Benchmarks on it may come out significantly lower, but in my experience real-life results are excellent. If you want to play Max Payne with all the settings turned up and have a bottomless pocketbook you should go for a different card, but for everyone else I highly recommend this one!
Rating: 
Summary: Steep Learning Curve; Can't Do Shadows
Review: WHAT I DO LIKE
==============
(1) I've had this card almost a year, and I'm running Ghost Recon, SWAT 3, Max Payne, NFS:PU, and Combat Missions on full detail at 1600x1200; Jedi Knight 2 and MOH:AA full detail at 1280x760. I'm replaying Half Life now, just because 1600x1200 looks so fantastic. Day Of Defeat, Counter Strike, and TFC are crisp and fluid. (2) It's very inexpensive. WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE
==================
(1) I had to fight pretty hard to get this card working with my system (AMD 1.4 with 1.25 GB SDRAMM), This included updating and flashing my motherboard Bios and miniport drivers, tweaking the BIOS settings for days, experimenting with several different drivers (Hercules and PowerVR both release drivers for this card), and pouring over numerous technical forums. I've had fewer problems since I upgraded to Windows XP from Windows 2000 though. (2) The biggest disappointment I have - ANY TYPE OF SHADOWS OR SMOKE EFFECTS bring the Kyro to its knees. Ghost recon is a good example: At full shadows, you get maybe 2 or 3 FPS. But if you turn shadows to low, and you get 30 FPS. Also, the card doesn't display snow fall in this game correctly; it looks like spikes rather than flakes. Check out some GR forums - it's not just me, these are "known issues" with the 4500. Shadows are not a big issue in Ghost Recon, but in Neverwinter Nights, where multiple shadows are cast to build atmosphere, it is VERY obvious. Any smoke effect (and some explosions with smoke) will cause this card to stutter badly in Ghost Recon. And MOH:AA. And Jedi Knight 2. And Max Payne. If I'd have known this, it probably would have been a deal-breaker. (3) Lots of people have serious issues with this card. Simply cruise the Hercules Forums ... and read the thread names: "PLEASE PLEASE HELP ME", "LAST TRY", "I'LL NEVER BUY HERCULES AGAIN", "RANDOM LOCKUPS", "RANDOM REBOOTS", "MISSING TEXTURES", "LOW FRAMERATES NO MATTER WHAT I DO", "I GIVE UP", etc. etc. There's even a bug that sometimes won't let the card display anything if your PC has MORE THAN 256 MB RAM. Tech Support will actually tell you to dumb down your system by removing extra RAM - unbelievable! Tech support is not very helpful, they simple tell you to do what I had to learn how to do: update ALL your system and hardware drivers including you motherboard BIOS and miniport drivers then tweak, tweak, tweak. A lot of users had to downgrade from the current drivers due to performance and compatibility issues. There are reported problems with the fan on the card burning out and needing to be replaced, which can take up to 6 weeks. There are also issues with OpenGL (the only fix 90% of the time is to run the game in Direct3D). (4) It's only 2X AGP. (5) Most games based on the Quake 3 engine seem to run and look their best at 1280x760 32 bit (this is just my observation). And set to low or no shadows. (6) It's starting to show it's age. Neverwinter Nights only gives me decent frame rates at 800x600. I'm running it at full detail with 64 bit textures and, of course, NO SHADOWS. Looks [bad] on my 19" Sony monitor. CONCLUSIONS
===========
(1) I would not recommend this card to a novice; it's for the hardcore gamer on a tight budget who is experienced at tweaking hardware. If you don't know what a miniport driver is, buy something else. (2) Don't use on a Windows 2000 PC, use only XP. (3) Be prepared to learn more about you BIOS than you ever wanted to. (4) When the card works, it works wonderfully. When it doesn't, you're pretty much on your own. Let me save you a call to tech support: UPDATE AND FLASH EVERYTHING YOU CAN. BOTTOM LINE
===========
If you're looking to upgrade, wait for the Readon 9700 in Q4 2002, which is looking too good to pass up. It's 250% faster than a Geforce 4... With the Readon 9700 coming soon, I'd advise waiting for it, rather than buying the 3D Prophet 4500. I will NOT buy a Kyro 3 card.
Rating:
Summary: Steep Learning Curve; Can't Do Shadows
Review: WHAT I DO LIKE
==============
(1) I've had this card almost a year, and I'm running Ghost Recon, SWAT 3, Max Payne, NFS:PU, and Combat Missions on full detail at 1600x1200; Jedi Knight 2 and MOH:AA full detail at 1280x760. I'm replaying Half Life now, just because 1600x1200 looks so fantastic. Day Of Defeat, Counter Strike, and TFC are crisp and fluid. (2) It's very inexpensive. WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE
==================
(1) I had to fight pretty hard to get this card working with my system (AMD 1.4 with 1.25 GB SDRAMM), This included updating and flashing my motherboard Bios and miniport drivers, tweaking the BIOS settings for days, experimenting with several different drivers (Hercules and PowerVR both release drivers for this card), and pouring over numerous technical forums. I've had fewer problems since I upgraded to Windows XP from Windows 2000 though. (2) The biggest disappointment I have - ANY TYPE OF SHADOWS OR SMOKE EFFECTS bring the Kyro to its knees. Ghost recon is a good example: At full shadows, you get maybe 2 or 3 FPS. But if you turn shadows to low, and you get 30 FPS. Also, the card doesn't display snow fall in this game correctly; it looks like spikes rather than flakes. Check out some GR forums - it's not just me, these are "known issues" with the 4500. Shadows are not a big issue in Ghost Recon, but in Neverwinter Nights, where multiple shadows are cast to build atmosphere, it is VERY obvious. Any smoke effect (and some explosions with smoke) will cause this card to stutter badly in Ghost Recon. And MOH:AA. And Jedi Knight 2. And Max Payne. If I'd have known this, it probably would have been a deal-breaker. (3) Lots of people have serious issues with this card. Simply cruise the Hercules Forums ... and read the thread names: "PLEASE PLEASE HELP ME", "LAST TRY", "I'LL NEVER BUY HERCULES AGAIN", "RANDOM LOCKUPS", "RANDOM REBOOTS", "MISSING TEXTURES", "LOW FRAMERATES NO MATTER WHAT I DO", "I GIVE UP", etc. etc. There's even a bug that sometimes won't let the card display anything if your PC has MORE THAN 256 MB RAM. Tech Support will actually tell you to dumb down your system by removing extra RAM - unbelievable! Tech support is not very helpful, they simple tell you to do what I had to learn how to do: update ALL your system and hardware drivers including you motherboard BIOS and miniport drivers then tweak, tweak, tweak. A lot of users had to downgrade from the current drivers due to performance and compatibility issues. There are reported problems with the fan on the card burning out and needing to be replaced, which can take up to 6 weeks. There are also issues with OpenGL (the only fix 90% of the time is to run the game in Direct3D). (4) It's only 2X AGP. (5) Most games based on the Quake 3 engine seem to run and look their best at 1280x760 32 bit (this is just my observation). And set to low or no shadows. (6) It's starting to show it's age. Neverwinter Nights only gives me decent frame rates at 800x600. I'm running it at full detail with 64 bit textures and, of course, NO SHADOWS. Looks [bad] on my 19" Sony monitor. CONCLUSIONS
===========
(1) I would not recommend this card to a novice; it's for the hardcore gamer on a tight budget who is experienced at tweaking hardware. If you don't know what a miniport driver is, buy something else. (2) Don't use on a Windows 2000 PC, use only XP. (3) Be prepared to learn more about you BIOS than you ever wanted to. (4) When the card works, it works wonderfully. When it doesn't, you're pretty much on your own. Let me save you a call to tech support: UPDATE AND FLASH EVERYTHING YOU CAN. BOTTOM LINE
===========
If you're looking to upgrade, wait for the Readon 9700 in Q4 2002, which is looking too good to pass up. It's 250% faster than a Geforce 4... With the Readon 9700 coming soon, I'd advise waiting for it, rather than buying the 3D Prophet 4500. I will NOT buy a Kyro 3 card.
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