Review: Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 (Kyro II) |
06/10/01 |
| The first to win TNL Hardware's Best Buy Award! |
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A Brief History of the Kyro II For a period of time, 3Dfx, ATI, and Nvidia dominated the market with their 3D accelerator cards. However, since Nvidia assimilated the once prevailing 3Dfx and completely erased them from the competition, the choice of videocards has significantly narrowed. The price of high-end videocards seemingly skyrocketed, which went as high as the $400+ GeForce 3. Until now, only the ATI Radeon cards have stood strong against the monstrous force of Nvidia's line of GeForce cards. Throughout history, empires have been known to rise and fall all the time. With the fall of the 3Dfx dynastic empire, a rise of a newer one was sure to follow… The new player in the game is STMicroelectronics, the same people who created the PowerVR processor that powered the Sega Dreamcast. In the past, PowerVR (the first generation of the Kyro videocards) has had little success in the PC realm because of poor performance, and even worse driver support, which nearly self-destructed the company and brought them to a dormant state. After a couple of years of watching the competition of 3D processors and doing research so they would not make the same mistake twice, STMicroelectronics finally produced their second chip named the Kyro II featuring a faster core and memory speed. Interestingly enough, STMicroelectronics took an ingenious marketing move by having Hercules distribute their Kyro II videocards, dubbed the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500. Hercules is best known for producing Nvidia's line GeForce cards. This new partnership seems be a slap in the face towards Nvidia, because Hercules now hosts a strong competitor that has the potential of blowing them out of the water. Before we go on, lets take a look at the specs of the Prophet 4500. Although they don't look very impressive, the results of our benchmark tests will show its true power! The Specs! 
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