Hercules 3D Prophet II Ultra

WHAT'S HOT: The Hercules 3D Prophet II Ultra matched the other Ultra boards we've tested in Unreal Tournament at a resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels and delivered nearly equal numbers in MDK2 and Quake III. At higher resolutions, the Hercules showed its strength: In Unreal Tournament it climbed to 62 frames per second at 1600-by-1200-pixel resolution and 32-bit color, slightly better than the next generation boards we tested.

WHAT'S NOT: This board had excellent image quality overall but stumbled a bit in a couple of games, with muddy coloration in Unreal Tournament and slightly washed-out highlights in Quake III. Even with a $19 price drop, the $390 cost of this Ultra board is steep. In fact, it's more expensive than some of the next-generation GeForce3 cards.

WHAT ELSE: If you have a compatible digital monitor, you can connect the 3D Prophet II Ultra through its DVI-output port. In addition, the board features an S-Video-out (as well as an S-Video-to-composite adapter cable) that will let you send output to compatible televisions. Hercules offers a three-year warranty with toll-free tech support for 10 hours each weekday. the company is phasing out this card, so buy now if you're interested.

BEST USE: For the serious gamer, this board is seriously speedy but falls behind the GeForce3 cards at the highest resolutions in most of our test games.

SUMMARY

Hercules 3D Prophet II Ultra 4X AGP, NVidia GeForce2 Ultra chip, 64MB of DDR SDRAM, 350-MHz RAMDAC; DVI-out, S-Video-out, composite-out; DVD playback and color-calibration software. $390 877/484-5536 www.hercules.com