Hercules 3D Prophet 9800XT Classic

I have had my Hercules 9800xt for 9 months and I
Cant really fault it although realistically now only as
good in doom 3 as the Nvidia 5900 ultra. It still spits out
over 50 fps on doom3 (no mean feat).

Mine came with a half life 2 voucher .

They can be picked up new on for £200 or
second hand on auction sites for £120 to £180

Right on to my pc and rig which is what i used ...
...asus p4p800deluxe motherboard
and Hercules 9800xt classic

Now gaming quality and playability is judged on fps
Frames per second (the higher the fps the better and
smoother your gaming experience is)


Anyway I usually use some benchmarking tools for this
like 3D mark 2001.SE

my best score with the hercules overclcoked in 3dmark2001 is as follows

3DMark ... more

I have had my Hercules 9800xt for 9 months and I
Cant really fault it although realistically now only as
good in doom 3 as the Nvidia 5900 ultra. It still spits out
over 50 fps on doom3 (no mean feat).

Mine came with a half life 2 voucher .

They can be picked up new on for £200 or
second hand on auction sites for £120 to £180

Right on to my pc and rig which is what i used at the time

pentium 4 3ghz @ 3.3ghz
1024 megs of corsair low latency pc3200
asus p4p800deluxe motherboard
and Hercules 9800xt classic

Now gaming quality and playability is judged on fps
Frames per second (the higher the fps the better and
smoother your gaming experience is)

Anyway I usually use some benchmarking tools for this
like 3D mark 2001.SE

my best score with the hercules overclcoked in 3dmark2001 is as follows

3DMark Score 18968

RESULTS
3DMark Score 18968
Game 1 - Car Chase - Low Detail 262.9 fps
Game 1 - Car Chase - High Detail 88.3 fps
Game 2 - Dragothic - Low Detail 357.0 fps
Game 2 - Dragothic - High Detail 192.5 fps
Game 3 - Lobby - Low Detail 227.5 fps
Game 3 - Lobby - High Detail 102.1 fps
Game 4 - Nature 141.8 fps
Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 2365.6 MTexels/s
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 3503.1 MTexels/s
High Polygon Count (1 Light) 101.0 MTriangles/s
High Polygon Count (8 Lights) 22.2 MTriangles/s
Environment Bump Mapping 210.4 fps
DOT3 Bump Mapping 279.8 fps
Vertex Shader 240.1 fps
Pixel Shader 253.0 fps
Advanced Pixel Shader 290.6 fps
Point Sprites 51.3 MSprites/s

18968 points is a very nice score and means you
get a very smooth gaming experience.

Another test i used was Quake3 arena timedemo
which tests your fps,i scored 250 fps on 1024x768
resolution. No anisotropic Filter on.

With anisotropic filter on i scored 222 fps at 1024x768

All in all very very satisfactory,this card runs unreal2k4
fine and far cry smoothly. 2D imagine quality is very nice also.

Although like all cards it has aged,that now means you
can pick this superb card up at a good price be it
second hand or new yipeee!.

And it runs doom3,far cry,unreal 2k4,and the latest Thief :deadly shadows all fine .

But please please make sure you have a powerful
enough Power supply as the 9800xt cards are juicy
and need a power supply thats man enough to run them anything like an Antec 430watt psu should be fine.But make sure you have got the true power ratings for your power supply before buying as some power
supplys say they are 430 watt when they are in fact only churning out 300 watt of power and less.

SUMMING UP
__________

1) although not all that difference to the other makes
of ati 9800xt ,Hercules customer support and replacement is second to none (at least in my experience).

2) Great performance can be picked up cheaply
on auction websites,

3)runs doom3,unreal2k4,far cry no problems.

4)nice overclocker .

5) other makers of this card include Sapphire,Asus,
MSI,and naturally ATI themselves (to name a few)

I that you find this review as helpful as possible,I have
tried to cover most bases in the review as best I can.
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