NVIDIA GeForce3 Roundup - July 2001

Guillemot/Hercules 3D Prophet III

Guillemot/Hercules 3D Prophet III Specifications
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Memory	64MB EliteMT DDR SDRAM 3.8ns
Cooling - Core	'Orb' style fan/heatsink combo
Cooling - Memory	160 "finger" RAMsinks
Temperature - Core	122 F / 50 C
Temperature - Memory	105 F / 40.6 C
TV-Out	S- Video and Composite Conexant CX25871
Video-In	N/A
Drivers	NVIDIA Reference
Highest Overclock	215/515MHz
Overclocking Utility	Hercules 3D Tweaker
2D Image Quality	3 (moderate)
Software/Gaming Bundle	PowerDVD 3.0
Average Online Price	$385.00

The 3D Prophet III shares the same blue color motif common to the other 3D Prophet cards on the market today, but color is not the only thing that the 3D Prophet III shares with the other cards in the 3D Prophet series.

Like other 3D Prophet cards, the 3D Prophet III sports flashy cooling solutions placed on an NVIDIA reference design board. The GeForce3 core on the 3D Prophet III is cooled via a very unique 'orb' style cooling device. Featuring no less than 54 fins on a heatsink attached to the GeForce3 core via thermal grease, we suspected that the heatsink/fan combination would get the job done right. The RAMsinks on the 3D Prophet III are also very unique. They feature 160 individual "fingers" of sorts to create quite a bit of surface area. The memory heatsinks come attached to the RAM chips via thermal tape.

With these traits in mind, it was really no surprise that the 3D Prophet III was one of the coolest running cards we tested. The core of the 3D Prophet III got to 122 degrees F, tying for third coolest. The memory temperatures measured a cool 105 degrees F, performing best in this test. It was a shame that these relatively cool temperatures did not equate to superior overclockability. We were only able to get our 3D Prophet III up to 215/515MHz, the lowest overclocked speed of all the cards in this roundup. Since we know that the core and memory chips are being cooled well, we can assume that the yield on our card was low, hence the poor overclocking success.

Also like other high-end 3D Prophet cards, the 3D Prophet III features video-out as well as a DVI-out port. These are nice features that add to the appeal to the card. One thing that the 3D Prophet series has lacked that we would have liked to seen is a wider selection of bundled software titles. Many GeForce3 cards are shipping with games that people actually do play, and we feel that the 3D Prophet III should be no exception.

We found the 2D image quality of the 3D Prophet III to be moderate, earning it a score of 3. Our notes show that the Hercules card performed very similarly to the Absolute Multimedia GeForce3 solution, receiving similar comments.

The Guillemot/Hercules 3D Prophet III is one of the few retail-store available GeForce3 cards that we got a chance to test. This is good for those not wanting to order a video card from the internet, but it does equate to higher prices. The 3D Prophet III falls on the more expensive side of non VIVO GeForce3 cards, due in a large part to its wide retail availability. This retail availability has also kept the 3D Prophet III from many e-stores, as it seems Guillemot/Hercules is focusing on your local computer superstores.