Hercules 3D Prophet 9800 Pro

When ATI's Radeon 9700 Pro was launched six months ago, it showed nVidia who was the boss when it came to high-performance graphics cards. As the graphics cards companies are ever keen to improve, however, we are now greeted by Hercules' latest card, built on ATI's next generation graphics processor.

Performance-wise, the card doesn't disappoint. It's faster than a turbo-charged bat out of hell and a long way ahead of the competition. Our test results showed that even high-resolution graphics running at maximum detail did little to hamper its speedy performance.

The £400 price tag for this card is equally dazzling. As a result, it's difficult to recommend because unless you have a similarly turbo-charged PC, running at around 2GHz, your computer won't be able to squeeze the full performance out of this card.

The Prophet's full DirectX 9 compatibility doesn't mean a lot either, as the games that support these extra features haven't begun to appear.

For a fuller picture, read the graphics card feature in issue 137 of Computeractive.

Contact: Micro-Peripherals 01794 528 200
http://europe.hercules.com