WHAT'S HOT: The Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS Pro's high performance and reasonable price make it a great deal. Even though the Pro chip is less powerful, this board was nearly as fast as the Ultra-based boards we tested. Only at the highest resolutions and color depths did we see a difference, and even there the 3D Prophet II Pro did a more than respectable job.

In fact, this board delivered a very high score of 58 frames per second in Unreal Tournament at 1600-by-1200-pixel resolution using 32-bit color, nearly matching the Ultra boards on our chart. Not only did it beat the GeForce2 GTS boards in our Quake III test, its frame rates nearly matched the Ultras--except at the highest resolutions. This board produced excellent image quality in both Unreal Tournament and Quake III, with sharp details and contrast.

WHAT'S NOT: This Pro, like many of the other boards we tested, was unable to run Test Drive 6 at 1600-by-1200 resolution in 32-bit color. We also noticed a grayish tint in this game. While less expensive than the Ultras, the Pro still costs $350, more than the average GTS board. You'd better act fast if you're planning to buy this board, as Hercules plans to discontinue this Pro and will stop shipping it in mid-April.

WHAT ELSE: The TV-out port lets you send PC video to a television. Hercules offers a respectable three-year warranty with toll-free tech support for 10 hours each weekday.

BEST USE: If you want a more powerful board than one based on a GeForce2 GTS, but don't want to spend the $500 it takes to bring home an Ultra, the Pro delivers nearly as much speed at a lower price.

SUMMARY

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