Hercules Revived With New Wares

Hercules graphics card compatibility was once nearly vital for anyone running vibrant graphics applications. The company gradually lost ground as powerful graphics became standard on PCs, however, and filed bankruptcy in August. Now Hercules is back--sort of.

Its assets were acquired in October for $1.5 million by Canadian manufacturer Guillemot, which has introduced a high-end graphics card under the Hercules name. The action may only have a cosmetic impact.

"The add-in board market is declining except for gamers," says analyst Jon Peddie. "New computers are coming out with great graphics, and the processor is being upgraded every six months, so the idea of enhancing your PC with a new add-in board to extend the useful life is not as important."

Gamers, who are on a constant quest for graphical power, are the target market. The $299 Hercules 3D Prophet DDR-DVI graphics accelerator was fully developed by Guillemot and scheduled for introduction before the Hercules acquisition.

Look to the automotive world for comparison: Chrysler recently merged with Mercedes, but they maintain separate manufacturing operations. Were the car makers handling their merger like Guillemot and Hercules, Mercedes would bite the dust entirely while Chrysler slaps the Mercedes name on a new LeBaron developed in Detroit. But the graphics board merger isn't necessarily bad news.

"This is almost irrelevant from the end-user perspective," says Peter Glaskowsky, a senior analyst for Cahners MicroDesign Resources. "Hercules hasn't done its own chip design for some time. This just means that a familiar name has a new manufacturer."