Conclusion
ConclusionOMG, this is one fine card people ! It's by definition about 20% cheaper than the Pro version and yet manages to deliver some serious kickass performance. Still, 399 Euro is a lot of money but it does beat the GeForce4 Ti 4600 in the exact same price range. There is no doubt in my mind that you will like this card. Feature wise it has everything you want and need for quite a while, stability wise everything was peachy perfect on our test-platform, even VIA's KT400.
When we combine functions like anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering then the only real competitor at the time is the Pro version. NVIDIA GeForce FX is only weeks away from going on sale and if you are in the market for the best of the best than you might want to consider waiting a little to see what NVIDIA has to bring because once again it will be faster and will again have more features, you can read our GeForce FX preview here. It'll probably also be more expensive though. Seriously where does it end, at what limit do we stop paying ?
You can expect a very high level of performance and set of features to date, you play all games in 1600x1200x32 without a doubt and you are able to play the games with features like 6X AA and 1
6x Anisotropic filtering while maintaining very good framerates in 1024x768x32. Everything was 100% stable and the games I tested did not have any issues.
If you got your wallet filled with enough dough and you are a hardcore gamer willing to spend about 399 Euro (cheaper in retail as this is the suggested price by Hercules) then you can seriously opt this card as there is no doubt in my mind you will like it. Once again an editor's choice, it seems they are slowly becoming standard with Hercules products nowadays. It's easy though, if a product deserves it we'll give it to them, it's that simple. Great hardware and software package, awesome product and a reasonable price.
Manufacturer: Hercules
MSRP: 399
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