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. Financial troubles then saw Hercules teeter on the brink of dissolution, until it was resurrected by Guillemot and the legendary Hercules Prophet II GeForce2 GTS 64MB card. It won the Labs Award for Speed in September 2000 (page 61), so we included it in the performance tests this time around as a yardstick card.

The Prophet III Titanium 500 did not top the charts in this Labs, though it is practically indistinguishable in performance from the other Ti 500 cards. It does, however, descend from the lineage of graphics cards that inspired the competition to compete at its level, and experiment with some funky PCB colours to boot. With the Prophet III Titanium 500, you are assured of a top quality card that includes a DVI port for displays, with a digital input, TV-out and composite connections - and its trademark blue colour. While not king of the hill at the moment, Hercules is like the BMW of the graphics card arena, and still commands respect.