Blue Wonder? The Guillemot/Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS – THG.RU

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The Guillemot/Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS” –>

Introduction

The color blue seems to be the latest fashion with graphics cards. Besides Gigabyte, Guillemot is now using this optical clue to differentiate their product from all the other manufacturers. There is another unusual thing: the memory modules are equipped with a heat sink. Under the hood of the 3D Prophet II GTS works nVidia’s latest GeForce2 GTS chip. The latter we already described extensively in Tom’s Take On NVIDIA’s New GeForce2 GTS. In this test we compare the 32 MB version of the 3D Prophet II GTS with the competitors Aopen PA256 Pro, Asus AGP-V7700 Pure, Elsa Gladiac and Leadtek Winfast GeForce2, that are all based on nVidia’s newest offspring.

A few readers have already informed us about the somewhat different brand names of this graphics card. The retailers offer this product under the brand Guillemot, but you will also find the brand Hercules. In general: Whether it is Hercules or Guillemot, this graphics card only has one name. The confusion is actually caused by the Guillemot Corporation, since it sells the Hercules brand. We have observed similar inconsistencies with 3dfx as well. Their Voodoo graphics cards also surface under the brand STB at individual retailers – mainly because in each case the manufacturer failed to explain the details of the acquisition to the distributors.

So what actually is the deal with Hercules graphics cards from Guillemot? Hercules used to be an independent company with financial problems, that filed for bankruptcy in August 1999. In October Guillemot purchased the Hercules leftovers for a symbolic price of only $1.5 million – including the outstanding debts from the bankruptcy. Guillemot decided to continue the Hercules brand in November 1999. They probably wanted to acknowledge Hercules’ achievements as a pioneer in the graphics industry. The relatively old company, founded in the small town Hercules near San Francisco in 1982, had established a standard for monochrome monitors in the 80’s, that consequently was named after the company. From the mid 90’s until the end Hercules concentrated on producing graphics cards – but never owned a fab. During this time Hercules tried very hard to distinguish itself from the other manufacturers of graphics cards. For a few individual chips this strategy succeeded, but the other chips received harsh criticism from various test labs and customers. The company had shipped graphics cards with chips that often were tuned above the specifications. Now and then their products suffered from instabilities and a bad picture quality due to so-called pixel noise.

The newest flagship 3D Prophet II GTS seems to follow this tradition. By default the GeForce2 GTS is clocked at 210 MHz and thus operates 10 MHz above nVidia’s official recommendation. Guillemot also sets the memory clock to 340 instead of the usual 333 MHz. The heat sinks give an encouraging impression, but this does not necessarily mean that this product is the ultimate candidate for overclocking. You will find out later on whether the heat sinks really make any sense.

Markets and Competitors

If you are interested in the GeForce2 graphics cards that we already tested in an earlier article, just click on the links below.

• AOpen PA256 Pro
• Asus AGP-V7700-Serie
• ELSA Gladiac
• Hercules/Guillemot 3D Prophet II GTS
• Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 GTS

Despite the high price of GeForce2 graphics cards, the first manufacturers are now even offering luxury versions. For example the suffix “Deluxe TV” denotes Asus’ first GeForce2 card with TV tuner onboard, and thus competes with products covered in Multitalented All-in-One Graphic Boards. AOpen only defines a TV out connector for the PA256 Deluxe, but no TV tuner. Currently it only supports the NTSC standard – which means it is useless in Europe. The features of the cards from Elsa and Creative are a little disappointing. Both cards do not come with any video input or output. Therefore the MPEG capabilities of the GeForce2 chip are barely utilized. At least Elsa is offering an optional video module. If you want to get it, and spend some extra cash, you should ask your retailer. In case of Creative the only consolation is that the lack of features saves the consumer some money. Creative cards are currently the cheapest on the market. Unfortunately we cannot say this about Elsa, despite the lacking features.

For power gamers who feel absolutely no pain, Hercules and Elsa offer a 64 MB version of their GeForce2 graphics card. For a hefty surcharge you can then play your game with True Color, 32 bit textures and 24 bit z-buffer at a resolution of 1600×1200. However, you might encounter a few bandwidth problems. Despite the relatively high memory clock of 333 MHz, the large video memory is not necessarily capable of meeting all the demands – and this can slow down the games. Hercules is the only company utilizing the new integrated digital interface for flat panels, and ships the 3D Prophet II GTS 64 MB with a DVI connector. This is an advantage for owners of an expensive LCD monitor with digital connector. It may be necessary to buy a DVI-to-DFP or DVI-to-PnD adapter, offered by companies such as Foxconn or Molex. Below is a table containing the most important characteristics of all GeForce2 graphics cards.

Feature Table for Current GeForce2 Graphics Cards

3D Prophet II GTS Drivers

The core drivers of the Hercules card are based on version 0516. The performance resembles nVidia’s 0516 reference drivers (Detonator 2), as Hercules didn’t use any tweaks. Hercules still does not have a driver update. At least version 0530 of the nVidia reference drivers circulating on a few Websites.

The general display adapter information shows the embedded Hercules logo, otherwise it is simply a copy of the nVidia reference drivers. As you can see, the card offers an encoder chip for TV-out. It gets more interesting, however, if you press the button ‘Additional Properties’.

Here you can adjust brightness, contrast and gamma, which may be changed globally or individually. It is even possible to store a ‘scheme’.

No new stuff for the DirectX 7 compatible Direct3D interface. For most games you do not need to change anything. However, if you want to switch of the V-Sync to boost the performance, you must use an appropriate tool like for example Powerstrip.

3D Prophet II GTS Drivers, Continued

The settings for the OpenGL APIs are exemplary. At this point we must compliment nVidia on the clean drivers. Users of professional OpenGL applications will also find drivers for Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 at nVidia. Under Window 9x the OpenGL interface is mostly just used for appropriate games like Quake.

The overlay color controls are quite confusing for newcomers. After all, there are already similar controls for color correction. Only a few of you will need this neat additional feature.

This is were it gets interesting for overclocking cracks. These controls let the user overclock the card mercilessly. The card stalled at 265MHz for the graphics chip and 425MHz for the memory clock – Hercules obviously exaggerated a little bit. At least the card resets to the standard settings after a crazy overclocking attempt. We will discuss the realistic overclocking settings later on in this article.

Most modern monitors retrieve the maximum picture refresh rates automatically. Usually the user does not need to fiddle with these settings. However, for certain displays, like our liyama Vision Master 510 Pro, you should rather install the INF update that you can get from the homepage of the manufacturer.

TV-Out Connector

The Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS 32 MB is equipped with a TV-out connector. The 64 MB version comes with an additional DVI connector for LCD monitors using digital connectors.

This Conexant Brooktree Bt869RKF is the TV encoder chip and resides on the rear of the graphics card.

To the right of the VGA connector is the TV-out. It allows you to also display games on a TV using Cinch or S-VHS. When connected to the TV, the device is detected automatically. In the display characteristics the appropriate field is activated, which also reduces the resolution.

Test Methodology

Testing this card gave us a few headaches. As you already found out in the introduction, Hercules/Guillemot tunes the 3D Prophet II GTS above the values officially specified by nVidia. It was obvious to us from the beginning, that this card must do better than the other GeForce2 candidates. However, to guarantee comparable results, we did the performance measurements with the default setting of 210 MHz for the chip and 340 MHz for the memory, as well as with the official nVidia settings of 200/333 MHz. Nevertheless, we publish the results for both settings. Our reference platform is based on a Pentium III 866. All GeForce2 results are compared to its predecessor chip GeForce 256.

We benchmark for the most important game interfaces: OpenGL, and Direct3D API from DirectX 7. In case of OpenGL we run the test with the game Quake 3 Arena, and for Direct3D we use the Demo Game1 from the 3DMark 2000. Furthermore we investigate the performance with Full Scene Anti-Aliasing (FSAA) switched on, that improves the picture quality in games by smoothing the edges. The helicopter scene from 3DMark’s Game1 possesses high complexity and uses the T&L capabilities of the GeForce chip in Direct3D. The NV15 Demo in Quake 3 Arena also utilizes the T&L capabilities.

We set the resolution to 640×480, 1024×768 and 1600×1200. Low resolutions show the quality of the drivers and the board layout. Only a few gamers will still play at 640×480. These days the standard resolution is 1024×768, which is used by the majority. Only a few freaks play at 1600×1200, but in the past the possible frame rates never delivered satisfying results. Let’s see whether the 3D Prophet II achieves acceptable results at this bandwidth-hungry resolution.

Generally, a smooth picture sequence requires an average of 60 frames per second or more. Please note, that all results show the average frame rate. Within one benchmark lower instantaneous values may occur. At 30 frames or less the game gets to jerky. Therefore you need at least 60 frames (for the complete run of a demo) to be on the safe side.

In our last graphics card test we observed that modern cards show almost no differences in 2D applications anymore. Therefore we are not testing with BABCo’s Sysmark2000. We do address the topic of overclocking, however, and determine the maximum settings for this Hercules card. In the roundup we especially discuss the purpose of chip and memory overclocking. Both methods are thoroughly explored. The 3D Prophet II GTS is also tested in a motherboard with BX chipset running at 133 MHz FSB and system speed. Since the AGP bus then operates at 88.8 MHz, owners of such systems can use this test as a very good stability indicator.

Test Setup

OpenGL-Performance: Quake 3 Arena

This chart shows the results for the 3D Prophet II GTS as red bars for both clock frequency combinations. 200/333 resembles the official nVidia specification, 210/340 are the default settings from the manufacturer (overclocked). The green bars show the results of the predecessor chip GeForce 256. All other GeForce2 candidates receive a different color. We will keep this color combination for all the following charts.

The Demo001 with a color depth of 16 bit from Quake 3 Arena puts the smallest demands on the Hercules card. We will later increase the complexity of the demos, the color depth and the z-buffer. But even with our 866 MHz Pentium III the values are very close to the limit at 1600×1200. Owners of ‘smaller’ CPUs will already observe a jerky picture at this resolution.

At high-quality resolutions and 32 bit color depth Quake 3 becomes pretty much unplayable at the 1600 resolution. However, with the standard resolution of 1024×768 the 3D Prophet II achieves excellent results of 81 and more frames per second – even if it only runs at standard clock frequency.

OpenGL-Performance: Quake 3 Arena, Continued

Let’s now increase the complexity with the NV15Demo, that can be downloaded from www.nvidia.com. This demo supposedly uses the T&L features of the GeForce chips. However, the frame rates of 30 fps and less are not very satisfying. At least the details in this demo are impressive.

Again, the same demo – only with high-quality settings. We actually did expect a larger performance delta between 16 and 32 bit – just as in Demo001. Nevertheless, the performance results are far from optimal. We discovered that the T&L characteristics of the GeForce2 GTS are not utilized to the full extend here, as indicated by the low frame rates. There is a small trend, though: the 3D Prophet II is always in first place.

Direct3D-Performance: 3DMark2000 Game1

We will leave the OpenGL world now, and take a look at the second most important game API: Direct3D from DirectX 7. In Game1 we must concede the first place to the Asus AGP-V7700 as the best graphics card. Only by using the overclocked factory settings, the 3D Prophet II GTS is able to recapture the pole position.

Let’s now push up the complexity. At 32 bit color depth, 32 bit textures, 24 bit z-buffer and triple buffering, these 32 MB cards cannot display a resolution of 1600×1200 anymore. They already almost run out of steam at 1024×768. At least the Hercules card makes it to the front.

Full Scene Anti-Aliasing

Now we address the ever-popular topic of full scene anti-aliasing (FSAA), that smoothes the edges and thus improves the picture quality in games. To achieve this, nVidia renders the scenes in a frame buffer that is four times the size of a regular frame buffer. It creates a picture that is twice the size along the x-axis as well as along the y-axis (thus the depiction fourfold). Each frame is then filtered down to the default resolution, which achieves the smoothing effect on the edges. Important note: we just described the worst case scenario. Intermediate steps are also possible. Find out more about FSAA in Tom’s article.

Let’s look at this worst case now: The picture quality is admittedly impressive, but the frame rates are bad. At 800×600 they are at the same low level as at 1600×1200. This is not surprising, because the chip must render the scene internally at 1600×1200, and then filter it down to 800×600. Voila. The explanation is very simple. Personally, I am not too fond of FSAA in a shooting game like Quake. Quick reactions are more important here. In this case FSAA only slows things down – especially since the OpenGL driver only allows an on/off setting. In case of Direct3D games it is at least possible to set intermediate steps. Generally, I think that FSAA makes more sense for strategy games. The frame rates are less important and you also look at the scenes longer – most certainly longer than a motivated Quake player, who runs through the rooms with a gun in his hand.

During the NV15Demo everything slows down to a slow crawl with activated FSAA. At least the 3D Prophet II GTS achieves better results than all other candidates.

Overclocking Chip and Memory

From the start we were interested whether the additional heat sinks on the memory chips boosts the overclocking capabilities of the 3D Prophet II GTS. In a five-hour test we went through all the possible settings. But before you look at the results, you should know that there are slight deviations in the quality of the memory chips due to the production process. The board design and the cooling of the graphics chips also influence the overclocking capabilities. All following results refer to the cards we tested. However, slight changes might occur on your model.

First, we slowly increase the chip clock, and test the card with Quake 3 at high resolution to reach the bandwidth limit. Unfortunately we soon realized that the buck stopped at 215 MHz. All other contestants reached higher numbers. But the chip clock is not the deciding factor, as you will find out later. Next we slowly increase the memory clock. At 355 MHz we observed the so-called pixel noise, that manifest themselves as small white dots on the screen. The 3D Prophet II GTS ran stable up to a clock frequency of 390 MHz, even over a longer time period. However, everybody needs to decide for him or herself whether he or she wants to live with the pesky pixel noise. The result: the heat sinks on the memory chips do not accomplish much. Our hot overclocking monster is still the Leadtek Winfast GeForce2. Note: At a memory clock of 390 MHz we again tried to increase the chip clock – unfortunately without success.

Overclocking Chip and Memory, Continued

In previous tests we already pointed out, that the memory is the actual bottleneck with GeForce2 graphics cards and not the graphics chip. Therefore we explored this relationship a little further. First we set the memory to a constant frequency. In case of the 3D Prophet II GRS this means 390 MHz – thus the maximum. Now we control the chip clock in small steps and measure the performance differences.

Here it already becomes obvious that the chip clock is not the bottleneck. Please note, that we had to ‘stretch’ the scale of the y-axis between 30 and 35 fps to actually even show the differences. Changing the chip clock at high resolutions has hardly any influence. All values settle between 34 to 35 fps.

And here is the bottleneck! As you can see, the performance differences are significantly larger. Increasing the memory clock at this resolution from 340 to 390 MHz results in a 15 percent performance gain for this card. nVidia could get impatient now. As long as these memory bandwidth problems have not been solved, even the best chip will always hit a wall. We hope that the memory industry is going to make some progress in the near future to eliminate this flaw.

BX133-Overclocking/Stability

Apart from our standard tests the 3D Prophet II GTS as well as its contestants underwent a burn-in on an overclocked BX motherboard. Every candidate had to survive an one-hour endurance test with Quake 3. A BX chipset on an Abit motherboard clocked with 133 MHz produces an AGP clock of 88.8 MHz – which is one third above the specification. In this configuration the Prophet achieved excellent results without any visual errors, stalls or other bugs. Therefore owners of a BX motherboard can be pleased. It is possible to upgrade without any problems.

Final Words

For game enthusiasts, who do not care about overclocking, the Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS is the fastest GeForce2 graphics card currently on the market. Therefore it is certainly worth recommending. You should keep in mind, however, that the improved performance mainly comes from setting the graphics chips and the DDR memory to 210/340MHz by default. Despite the slight overclocking that was preset in the factory, the Hercules card ran stable in all our tests. Nevertheless, this approach deserves some criticism: If the card is operated 200 MHz chip clock and 333 MHz memory clock, in compliance with the official nVidia specifications, the differences to the other competitors in the GeForce2 league are negligible. We do not think that it would be a good idea for graphics card manufacturers to ship their products preset with higher clock frequencies than recommended by the chip manufacturer. A card overclocked by default should not become a standard in the future! It should be left to the user – who consequently will carry the risk.

During our test the heat sinks on the memory chips did not turn out to be the megahertz booster overclockers had hoped for. At a clock frequency of 355 MHz pixel noise set in, which has a negative effect on the picture quality. The stable limit was at a clock frequency of 215 MHz for the chip and 390 MHz for the memory. Especially overclocking-friendly was the Winfast GeForce2, that we could drive to a maximum of 240/400 MHz. We must point out here, however, that Leadtek has hardly any distribution channels for their products in central Europe, so it is quite a challenge to find the Winfast on the shelves there.

A bargain is still the Creative 3D Blaster GeForce2 that occasionally costs about 50 bucks less than the Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS. However, the Creative card does not offer any additional features like video-out and game bundles. At least you can connect this Hercules card to the TV via S-VHS. Presently retailers sell the 32 MB version at $279. Porsche drivers and home owners pay about $379 for the 64 MB version.