Hercules is now part of the French company Guillemot, and is a strong player in the high end graphics arena. With a fabulous reputation for making some of the most overclockable cards on the planet ever since the nVIDIA TNT days, Hercules cards demand a high premium compared to some of the other manufacturers in the shootout today. Most graphics card boxes features either scantily clad faireys or angry looking demons these days; In the Hercules 3D Prophet 9600 Pro’s case, it is the latter.
Inside the box you will find a foam protected 9800 Pro card, which is the usual blue Hercules colour. In a departure from the clone cards in this roundup, Hercules have kitted their 9800 pro out with a fancy copper blorb style cooler, complete with a bling-bling blue LED fan for the case modders out there, and copper ramsinks all around. Like their 9700 pro card, which you can read about here, Hercules has also put a large heatsink on the rear of the card. Aside from the cooling system, the Hercules is again a direct clone of the reference PCB.
In addition to the card itself, Hercules provide an s-video Lead, a composite cable, a DVI-VGA adaptor and a full copy of PowerDVD. Also included is a full copy of the game Raven Shield, which will appeal to the stealth-em-up fans amongst you. Hercules have personalised the Catalyst drivers with their own company logos and touches, but we still recommend you grab ATi’s reference 3.7 drivers for optimal performance and compatibility.
In terms of performance the Hercules 9800 Pro was exactly the match of the Crucial model on the proceeding page – which is what you would expect since they are based on the same PCB and run at the same clock speeds. Removing the copper ramsinks, which are no match for a freezer and some pliers, reveals the same Samsung 2.8ns wafer as the Crucial card. Overclocking was a lot more satisfying on the Hercules card, with its non-standard cooler allowing us to take the card up to a whopping 441 MHz core speed. The memory was not as helped by the ramsinks as you might think, reaching a measly 5Mhz further than the “naked” Crucial model at 371Mhz before tearing started to appear in the 3DMark stress test. So far so good then, with the Hercules currently leading the pack in overclockability. In value for money stakes it looses out to some of the competition however, as at £292 inc VAT, it is some £16 more than the Crucial model from Chillblast, who were kind enough to provide this sample.
