Hercules 3D Prophet All-In-Wonder 9000

Six months ago we reviewed the Hercules 3D Prophet 9000 Pro and we were rather impressed. However, we noted that a Ti4200 graphics card would do much the same job as the 9000 Pro.

Now we have the Hercules 3D Prophet All-In-Wonder 9000 Pro, which is chock-full of features and does far, far more than any Ti4200.

An All-in-Wonder has a complicated design and construction to prevent the TV tuner suffering interference problems, so previous All-In-Wonder cards have carried a premium of about £150 and have also been clocked slower than the basic design which impacts on performance.

The really big news is that the All-In-Wonder 9000 Pro costs £199 inc VAT, and is clocked at the same speeds as the original 9000 Pro, so its performance is very healthy.

This makes the card a particularly tempting prospect if you are thinking of connecting your PC to your TV, as it has decent DirectX 8.1 gaming performance, as well as a list of ports and features.

The backplate of the card has a DVI output and a coaxial aerial input, but there are also ports for video input and video output adaptors.

All the hardware and cables are supplied in the box. The upshot is that you get audio input and output, composite video input and output, and S-Video input and output, plus an RF remote control with a USB receiver.

In addition to the usual ATI Catalyst software, Hercules has included Ulead Videostudio version 5.0. That's a huge amount of extras for only £60, and the only 'missing' feature is a FireWire port for DV camcorders.

Check out the Mesh Matrix XP2400+ DVX on p52 to see how the All-In-Wonder 9000 Pro performs in a budget PC.

Specs

• Core 275MHz, 128bit DDR GPU
• Dual 400MHz Ramdacs
• 64MB DDR SD-Ram running at 540MHz
• 8Gbps memory bandwidth
• DVI output (DVI to VGA adaptor supplied)
• Coaxial aerial input, video in port, video out port
• OpenGL 1.3 and DirectX 8.1 compliant
• AGP 2x and 4x compatible