Performance

When testing we used the Guillemot Drivers which shipped with the card (v5.22) and the latest Detonator reference drivers from NVIDIA's website (v6.18). Surprisingly we actually saw better results from the original drivers that shipped with the card which is a very good sign and should be seen as a mark for Guillemot's commitment to provide the best possible performance and optimisation for its customer's rather than just taking NVIDIA's drivers and sticking their logo on them.

We also compared it to a Leadtek Winfast 32MB version of the same chipset to have a proper comparison.

Mad Onion 3DMark 2000

3DMark 2000 is one of the best 3D performance diagnostic benchmark software currently available. To provide a comprehensive result we ran under two resolutions 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768 both in 16-bit colour. We have also shown the differences between the Detonator and 3D Prophet's own drivers by displaying the CPU and Texture Rendering speeds.

As can be seen by the 3D Mark results, the 3D Prophet clearly leads the pack, with interestingly enough with it's reference drivers, and not the Detonator drivers that have recently received all the publicity. We must also give credit to Leadtek's design as it comes in very well for a 32MB DDR card. Once you start getting into the higher resolution, the extra 32 Mg of DDR memory will really start coming into its own.

3DMark 2000 - CPU SPEED (CPU 3D Mark)

The Hercules drivers make major strides over the Detonator drivers in CPU Speeds and this is most certainly attributed to the coding of addressing the processor contained within the drivers. We do not have the specific coding of the drivers and are therefore unable to provide any further analysis.

3DMark 2000 - 16MB Texture Rendering Speed (FPS)

Here is where it gets really interesting, do you use the supplied drivers from Hercules or do you indeed download and use the Detonator drivers? the choice is yours and will depend on what you use your computer for. It is clear from the above graph the Detonator drivers have the edge over Hercules supplied drivers when it comes down to Texture Rendering. Our advice would be for those of you using the system for Games go for the Detonator drivers, for those of you using it for general and/or business purposes then stick with the Hercules supplied drivers.

BAPCO - SYSmark 2000

SYSmark 2000 is an application-based benchmark that reflects today's leading edge software applications for Internet Content Creation and Office Productivity.

Obviously gone are the days when video drivers could make all the difference in the 2D benchmark. With 2D optimisation getting about as good as it's going to get or in fact you're going to need for that matter, these benchmarks are coming down to the speed of the CPU, hard drive etc and you could swap current video cards in and out all day long and see little or no difference.

SYSmark 2000 does not report back any major shifts between the drivers and the Leadtek video card. The corresponding differences are very small; the Hercules 3D Prophet does come out on top. According to the results we have obtained to date in our labs this is a fine score for the Hercules card, particularly for 2D benchmarks, and as mentioned earlier there is not much improvement that be achieved on 2D platform.

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