Hercules 3D Prophet 4000 32 MB AGP

Rating:
Summary: Great entry level card!
Review: At under 80 bucks, this is one of the cheapest 3D cards available. But I find it a solid performer in 3D games nonetheless. I did some benchmarking of the 4000XT and my old Voodoo3 2000 16MB PCI card, and the 4000XT in all cases achieved significantly higher frame rates. I have an Intel Pentium III 600Mhz 128MB Windows 98 PC, and I set resolution to 1024x768. In Descent 3, at the start of Level 1, Voodoo3 gave me a frame rate of 52 fps using Glide (Voodoo's exclusive feature) and 40 fps using OpenGL. But with the 4000XT, I got 83 fps using OpenGL! In Half-Life, using timedemo benchmarking, Voodoo3 gave me 99 fps using OpenGL and 44 using Direct3D, but the 4000XT gave me 110 and 81. In Quake, using timedemo in OpenGL mode, I got 69 fps with Voodoo3, but 82 with 4000XT. In Quake II, again with timedemo under OpenGL, I got 68 fps from Voodoo3, and 82 from 4000XT. Besides getting good speed from the 4000XT, I also had zero problem RUNNING the above games, some of which you may notice are quite old. Quake and Quake II in OpenGL mode were designed exclusively for Voodoo cards (back when 3Dfx was a leader in the industry), and I had to run them in "default" OpenGL mode with the 4000XT, which was not guaranteed to work. The one big surprise is how well the 4000XT can run Descent 3 in OpenGL mode, even faster than Voodoo3 does in Glide mode. I used absolutely no tweaks in all of the benchmarks, since some tweaks could benefit some video cards more than the others. The Voodoo3 was considered one of the top boards two years ago. If you have anything inferior than that, then this upgrade is very worthy. The 4000XT uses the mediocre Kyro chipset (which has already been superceded by the newer Kyro II chip). So this is a case of inferior technology of today surpassing superior technology of yesterday.

There are also the obvious advantages of the 4000XT over the Voodoo3 -- it has 32MB of onboard RAM and can display 32-bit color depth. The 32MB memory allows more data to be stored, and in a game like Pro Pinball: Big Race USA, it allows you to enable the game's "frame flipping" feature that stores 2 frames in the memory at a time instead of one, which results in smoother animation (on the 16MB Voodoo3 card, enabling this feature would cause jerkiness). And 32-bit color depth is now mandatory in some 3D games, notably Myst III. I notice the ever popular Voodoo3 card is still selling at prices like $90 or more at some places. Pass those and buy the 4000XT instead.

One shortcoming of the 4000XT I found is that the included display driver provides no means to adjust contrast, brightness, color, or gamma. Your only recourse is to rely on the built-in controls on your monitor or in your games. Compare this to my Voodoo3 driver dated Nov 2000, which lets you adjust those settings not only for the desktop, but for Direct3D, OpenGL, and even for overlay image from DVD playback. I hope Hercules would update their software.

Rating:
Summary: Cheap but worthy
Review: At under 80 bucks, this is one of the cheapest 3D cards available. But I find it a solid performer in 3D games nonetheless. I did some benchmarking of the 4000XT and my old Voodoo3 2000 16MB PCI card, and the 4000XT in all cases achieved significantly higher frame rates. I have an Intel Pentium III 600Mhz 128MB Windows 98 PC, and I set resolution to 1024x768. In Descent 3, at the start of Level 1, Voodoo3 gave me a frame rate of 52 fps using Glide (Voodoo's exclusive feature) and 40 fps using OpenGL. But with the 4000XT, I got 83 fps using OpenGL! In Half-Life, using timedemo benchmarking, Voodoo3 gave me 99 fps using OpenGL and 44 using Direct3D, but the 4000XT gave me 110 and 81. In Quake, using timedemo in OpenGL mode, I got 69 fps with Voodoo3, but 82 with 4000XT. In Quake II, again with timedemo under OpenGL, I got 68 fps from Voodoo3, and 82 from 4000XT. Besides getting good speed from the 4000XT, I also had zero problem RUNNING the above games, some of which you may notice are quite old. Quake and Quake II in OpenGL mode were designed exclusively for Voodoo cards (back when 3Dfx was a leader in the industry), and I had to run them in "default" OpenGL mode with the 4000XT, which was not guaranteed to work. The one big surprise is how well the 4000XT can run Descent 3 in OpenGL mode, even faster than Voodoo3 does in Glide mode. I used absolutely no tweaks in all of the benchmarks, since some tweaks could benefit some video cards more than the others. The Voodoo3 was considered one of the top boards two years ago. If you have anything inferior than that, then this upgrade is very worthy. The 4000XT uses the mediocre Kyro chipset (which has already been superceded by the newer Kyro II chip). So this is a case of inferior technology of today surpassing superior technology of yesterday.

There are also the obvious advantages of the 4000XT over the Voodoo3 -- it has 32MB of onboard RAM and can display 32-bit color depth. The 32MB memory allows more data to be stored, and in a game like Pro Pinball: Big Race USA, it allows you to enable the game's "frame flipping" feature that stores 2 frames in the memory at a time instead of one, which results in smoother animation (on the 16MB Voodoo3 card, enabling this feature would cause jerkiness). And 32-bit color depth is now mandatory in some 3D games, notably Myst III. I notice the ever popular Voodoo3 card is still selling at prices like $90 or more at some places. Pass those and buy the 4000XT instead.

One shortcoming of the 4000XT I found is that the included display driver provides no means to adjust contrast, brightness, color, or gamma. Your only recourse is to rely on the built-in controls on your monitor or in your games. Compare this to my Voodoo3 driver dated Nov 2000, which lets you adjust those settings not only for the desktop, but for Direct3D, OpenGL, and even for overlay image from DVD playback. I hope Hercules would update their software.

Rating:
Summary: It's a very good card for the price
Review: I have had this card for 3 month. Have not had a problem with it.

Rating:
Summary: This is a very bad Video Card!!!
Review: I have had this card for a year and just this week I was having problems with it, I could not play game because they would crash ever time I would start them, so I thought maybe the driver needed updating so I update it and it still did it. so after that I decide to open the computer and look inside so I pull the card out and tried to move the fan but it would not move it was lockup, I could not believe that, my computer has some dust in it but I blow the dust out at least once a month. But anyway I try to buy a fan, but the manufacture does not sell the fans and they do not know who does. I said forget all this so I went to CompUSA and bought me a new PNY GeForce 4 TI4200 64Mb I put it in and started it up and install the new driver and click on my game and it started with no problems and I thank now I don't get as may crashes as I did with 3D Prophet 4000 so in a nut shell don't buy this product because if the fan stops working so will your video card.

Rating:
Summary: Great entry level card!
Review: This card is good for beginners, Hercules was always making #1 video card!
Card plays good, for the price its worth it

Rating:
Summary: good card
Review: this is a really good deal a 32 mb card for a low price and it's a good quality card.

Rating:
Summary: good card
Review: this is a really good deal a 32 mb card for a low price and it's a good quality card. The fact that it's a hercules 3d prophet told me that it would be a good card. i've seen other hercules cards and this one to me is a steal for it's low price and still a 32 mb card. i've seen other cards that tell you they're good but they don't say what they mean. if you were looking for a bargain and a good card you should go for this one.

Rating:
Summary: good card
Review: this is a really good deal a 32 mb card for a low price and it's a good quality card. The fact that it's a hercules 3d prophet told me that it would be a good card. i've seen other hercules cards and this one to me is a steal for it's low price and still a 32 mb card. i've seen other cards that tell you they're good but they don't say what they mean. if you were looking for a bargain and a good card you should go for this one.