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Installation...
Why do we even have this section anymore for
Graphics cards? Well, other than the very
rare motherboard incompatibility, installing a
graphics card these days is a non-event. The
Prophet II 64 gave us no trouble setting up in our
i815 based test bed. What we'll cover here
is the software side of things, since the hardware
was flawless.
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| Installation
/ Setup |
| Where
is the Detonator 3 version? |
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Our
board came shipping with drivers based on the 5.16
release of the nVidia reference drivers. We
checked the Hercules web site and were refreshed
to see the inclusion of BIOS updates available to
the end user but were disappointed to see that the
latest driver release was not much ahead of the
drivers in our box. At the time this review
was written, Hercules only had drivers based on
version 5.22 of the nVidia driver.
This
is not out of the norm for most OEMs in the nVidia
camp. Most almost expect their customer base
to default to the latest nVidia release.
Regardless, we'll give you a little taste of what
Hercules delivers out of the box.
Click
images for full view
Yawn......
Nothing special here. Again, at the rate
that nVidia releases drivers, most users will want
to go with the latest Detonator 3 release as they
become available. While we are on the
subject, we used the 6.18 version of the Detonator
3 drivers in our tests. This was for a
number of reasons including the fact that they
were not officially released and supported by
nVidia at the time of testing. We were made
aware that the
6.31 version drivers went live on the nVidia site,
after our testing was complete.
However,
the fact that we used the 6.18 revision here will
help you to make fair comparisons to the likes of
the GeForce2 Ultra and
other cards we reviewed here recently, since they
were all tested on the 6.18 release. Enough
with the boring stuff. Let's get on with the
show here.
One
thing we always like to do with each new video
card we review, is snap a few screen shots of the
most current games, really just for the "fun
factor" more than anything. While the
GeForce2 GTS is hardly a new video card product,
the Prophet II GTS 64 from Hercules is.
The
following shots were taken with nVidia's 2X2 (or
their version of 4X) FSAA setting and 32 bit
color. The shots are 1024X768 and are
relatively uncompressed so they are on the large
side. Those on the "phat pipe"
rejoice. Those on a dial-up will have to
suffer a little. :)
MDK2
with 2X2 FSAA in 32 bit color - Click images
Looks
like Rover has an affinity for cheap Malt Liquor
and Cigars.
What a coincidence, so do we!
Delta
Force - Land Warrior with 2X2 FSAA and 32 bit
color - Click images
2X2
FSAA on the Hercules Prophet II GTS 64, at
1024X768 in 32 bit color, was totally playable in
both of these games. In a game like Quake 3
Arena, you'll want to drop down to 800X600, just
to keep your edge, unless of course you over-clock
the card. We know, perish the thought...
More on this later.
Benchmarks,
Direct 3D and OpenGL
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