Back in September Hercules impressed us all by blowing away the competition in our 3D graphics card Labs..

Digital convergence is one of those irritating buzz phrases used to describe things like an Internet fridge. But every so often a product that epitomises the concept actually appears.

The Hercules branding has been associated with prestige quality and high performance since the release of the HGC display adaptor in 1982. More recently, the same applied to the Hercules Dynamite TNT2 Ultra - undeniably the quickest 3D card of its time, though notoriously difficult to get hold of.

The Hercules name is synonymous with quality and reliability, as well as blue-coloured graphics cards. Based around NVIDIA's new budget graphics chipset, the GeForce2 Titanium, the Hercules 3D Prophet II Titanium is Guillemot's latest offering, and it too is blue in colour.

Impressive performance at a nice price

There was once a time when 3dfx ruled the 3D accelerator market, but...

As it's essentially based on the older RADEON 9000 with AGP 8x, don't expect any groundbreaking performance from this GPU.

The Hercules RADEON 9800 PRO managed some very impressive scores in 3DMark2001SE Pro at high and low resolutions, and again in 3DMark03, although it suffered a little at high resolutions.

Our preconceptions have been blown away, and the Hercules XPS 510 takes home the Value Award.

The GeForce3 chip is quite an incredible thing.

The 3D Prophet II GTS 64Mb follows on a tradition in glorious form

The RADEON 9600 PRO was an interesting chip when it came to the 3DMark2001SE Pro tests. It actually performed better at high resolution than low resolution at default settings.

One of the least impressive performers, the ProphetView 720 features a sturdy base and aesthetically pleasing shape.

Four USB ports on the rack also turn it into a useful powered hub

To please audiophiles on a budget at $80 its one of the cheapest surround-capable cards available.

9700 Pro

There is quite simply no holding nVidia back. Hot on the heels of the top-performance GeForce2 GTS chipset, with its capacity for up to 64Mb of fast DDR...

LCD monitors look pretty slick, and beat most of the competition on looks alone.

Fastest 2D/3D graphics card