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Hercules, on the other hand, has always done quite well with the enthusiast community. Last year, we were quite taken with their Kyro II-based 3D Prophet 4500, an excellent mid-range graphics solution at the time. NVIDIA can’t have been happy with Hercules for its use of the Imagination Technologies Kyro II chip. Now Hercules has turned to ATI for the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE, which features ATI’s Radeon 8500LE graphics chipset.
The Hercules 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE is easily the highest profile third-party Radeon offering to date. What happens when Hercules and ATI, two Canadian companies, get into bed together? Do the socks stay on? Let’s find out.
The card
It’s a little odd to see a Canadian graphics card, built with a Canadian graphics chip, on a blue PCB. Blue has been Hercules’ color for a while now, but in this case, the patriot in me wishes they had a red and white version. I can only hope Hercules will come out with some sort of tricked-out limited edition card. *nudge nudge*
Hercules: obsessed with the color blue
It looks like heat sinks for memory chips aren’t going to be making it to mid-range cards like the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE. The lack of memory chip cooling may limit your overclocking, but you’ll be more constrained by the card manufacturer’s memory chip choice than anything else.
Half the RAM goes on the back of the card
When graphics cards had only 32MB of memory, it was easy to fit it all on one side of the PCB. Now, with 64MB cards permeating even the low end of the performance spectrum, almost everyone is putting RAM chips on both sides of their graphics cards.
DVI, VGA, and S-Video outputs grace the backplane
Hercules gives you plenty of output choices with the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE. There are S-Video, VGA, and DVI outputs. ATI’s new Hydravision multi-monitor utility is apparently quite flexible, but the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE’s multi-monitor potential is limited by its single RAMDAC. You can run multiple outputs by using the available backplane connectors, but I was a little disappointed that you can’t throw a DVI-to-VGA adapter on the DVI output and run two analog monitors.
Hynix chips rated to 250MHz
The 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE’s DDR memory chips are made by Hynix, and the chips on our review sample are only rated up to 250MHz. Speaking of which, oddly enough, Hercules doesn’t have any other high end ATI-based cards, like a full-blown Radeon 8500. Could more ATI-based Prophets be coming?
Full disclosure, sort of
As you may recall, there was a bit of confusion surrounding the core clock speeds of retail, OEM, and third-party ATI Radeon 8500 cards. Hercules tries to alleviate some of this confusion with some very clear box art that tells you exactly what the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE’s core clock speed is. You’ll notice, however, that there’s no mention of the memory clock speed. More on that later.
Rage Theater for the S-Video output
ATI’s Rage Theater chip handles the TV output, and its picture quality is almost as good as the quality of the picture I was able to snap of the chip. (Quite good to my eyes, in other words.)
How’s that fan?
Processor overclocking is so popular it’s almost passe. Well, almost. The next target for enthusiasts looking to ramp up their hardware has been the graphics processor, making the GPU heat sink/fan very important.
Oddly enough, there’s also a camp of enthusiasts that desire their PCs to be as quiet as possible. Silence often means passive cooling or low-RPM fans, neither of which agree with overclocking.
The translucent blue fan looks pretty trick
Hercules specs a tiny Orb-inspired heat sink on the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE, with a translucent blue fan. The setup certainly looks cool, but the heat sink seems far too diminutive to be able to do much in the way of cooling. We’ll get into exactly how well it works later in the review.
There’s no RPM-rating for the Hercules fan, but it’s barely audible when you have a standard processor fan running.
A generous dab of goop keeps the heat sink locked to the GPU
Like it or not, you’re pretty much stuck with the heat sink/fan that Hercules gives you with the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE, because Hercules glues the heat sink right onto the GPU; it would take a brave soul with a screwdriver to pry it off. I would far rather see Hercules go with a removable pin, or even screw-mounted heat sink here. At least then you’re left with the option of switching the stock cooling for something more silent, or something that’s going to cool the GPU more effectively.
A removable heat sink would have at least let me check Hercules’ thermal compound application, which I can only assume is ample given the goo oozing out from under the heat sink.
The specs
Theoretical performance might not always translate into real-world frame rates, but it’s worth taking a look at how the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE’s paper specs stack up against the competition.
The box tells us that the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE conforms to ATI’s spec of a 250MHz core clock speed for the Radeon 8500LE GPU. With four pixel pipelines, the 8500LE is right up there with the GeForce3 Ti 500 in terms of its theoretical fill rate. In fact, the 8500LE’s fill rate just surpasses that of the Ti 500 because of its 10MHz clock speed advantage.
Memory bandwith is where the bottleneck is for graphics cards today; what does the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE have on paper?
Remember that the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE’s box art didn’t specify a memory clock speed? There’s a reason. Although ATI specifies that the 8500LE’s DDR memory run at 250MHz, our 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE’s memory ran at only 238MHz. I emailed Hercules to see what was up, and apparently they’ve had some problems with motherboard compatibility with the card’s memory running at 250MHz. Hercules is working on a slightly different board design to alleviate the problem, but they’ve lowered the memory clock a little for now.
Even with a slight loss in memory clock speed, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE still has an impressive amount of memory bandwith to play with. Though just a mid-range card, it’s right up there with the GeForce3 Ti 500 again.
Our testing methods
As ever, we did our best to deliver clean benchmark numbers. All tests were run three times, and the results were averaged.
When we were conducting testing, the newest official NVIDIA drivers were the 23.11s, so we used those for our comparative testing. The e-GeForce4 MX 440 came with the 27.20 driver set on its installation CD, and we tested the card with those drivers. The 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE was tested with its shipping drivers, which correspond to ATI’s 6.13 release. Yes, I know that ATI and NVIDIA both have newer drivers out, and you’ll be seeing those updated drivers appearing in future reviews. This is what we’ve got for now.
We used the following versions of our test applications:
- MadOnion 3DMark 2001SE
- Vulpine GLMark
- VillageMark 1.17
- Quake III Arena 1.30
- Serious Sam v1.02
- SPECviewperf 6.1.2
The test system’s Windows desktop was set at 1024×768 in 32-bit color at a 75Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests. Most of the 3D gaming tests used the high detail image quality settings in 32-bit color.
All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.
3DMark 2001 SE
3DMark 2001 SE makes a good comparative test of DirectX 8.1 performance.
ATI and Hercules are quick to wave the ‘Full DirectX 8.1 Hardware Accelerator’ banner, and for good reason. The 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE performs exceptionally well here, almost catching NVIDIA’s GeForce3 Ti 500.
3DMark 2001 SE’s overall score aggregates the results of a number of different individual tests; let’s see how the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE performs in each of them.
3DMark 2001SE – Game benchmarks
First we have some simulated game scenes for our cards to crunch.
The 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE hangs right behind the Ti 500 in Game 1’s Car Chase.
The 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE rides the dragon all the way to victory in both high- and low-detail versions of Game 2’s Dragothic scene.
Game 3’s symphony of gunfire finds the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE relegated to third place, only a hair behind the GeForce3, but the top four cards are all quite close.
Our 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE turns in the worst performance of cards capable of displaying 3DMark’s Nature scene. Although ATI boasts full DirectX 8 compatibility, NVIDIA is definitely doing something better for the Nature scene. Still, the 3D Prophet FDX has the edge over any GeForce4 MX card.
3DMark 2001SE – Fill rate
We’ve already taken a look at our cards’ respective fill rates, but how do those fill rates translate to the real world?
With single-texturing, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE slides between the GeForce3 Ti 500 and GeForce3 again.
Moving to multi-texturing, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE pops into the lead and makes the most of its two-gigatexel-per-second theoretical fill rate.
3DMark 2001SE – Transform and lighting
T&L tests load up a bunch of triangles and throw lights at them.
With one light, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE takes quite a lead over the GeForce3 family thanks to its dual vertex shaders. NVIDIA’s best competitor here is their GeForce4 MX 440, which has a fixed-function hardware transform and lighting engine. (The GeForce3 implements fixed-function T&L as a vertex shader program on its single vertex shader unit.)
After adding seven more lights, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE continues to dominate the pack.
3DMark 2001SE – Bump mapping
Believe it or not, Matrox was initially way ahead of the pack with bump mapping. How do today’s cards handle textures with depth?
The 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE falls behind the entire GeForce3 family in dot-3 bump mapping.
In the environmental bump mapping test, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE is just a hair behind the GeForce3, but then all the EBM-capable cards tightly bunched.
3DMark 2001SE – Advanced features
Bring on the eye candy…
The 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE smacks around the rest of field in the point sprite test.
Moving to vertex shaders, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE’s dominance continues. The relatively decent performance of the GeForce4 MX 440, which uses DirectX 8 to emulate a vertex shader in software, suggests that NVIDIA’s hardware vertex shader implementation with the GeForce3 line isn’t all that exceptional.
3DMark 2001SE – Pixel shaders
Pixel shaders conclude 3DMark 2001 SE’s tests.
Pixel shaders aren’t really simple, but with the not-“advanced” ones, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE just tops the Ti 500.
With advanced pixel shaders, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE opens up a big lead over the Ti 500, and over the rest of NVIDIA’s GeForce3 line.
Villagemark
Neither ATI nor NVIDIA makes use of the kind of tile-based rendering scheme that Villagemark was designed to exploit, but they do have their own techniques to reduce overdraw. How do their implementations perform?
In low resolutions, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE leads the pack.
At 1024×768, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE still leads, but its margin of victory is shrinking.
The Ti 500 almost catches the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE at our highest resolution, but can’t quite do it. Honestly, it’s hard to tell whether the 8500LE’s better performance is due to superior overdraw-reduction techniques or simply greater fill rate. Some have suggested recently that Villagemark is more of a T&L test than anything else, in fact.
Vulpine GLMark
GLMark gives us our first look at ATI and NVIDIA’s OpenGL implementations.
In the lowest resolution, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE is simply outclassed by NVIDIA. Having a GeForce2 MX that close is embarrassing.
At 1024×768, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE creeps up the standings and narrowly tops the GeForce4 MX 440 for fourth place. It still has a ways to go to catch even a Ti 200.
In the highest resolution, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE vaults up to second place behind the Ti 500, with the rest of the GeForce3 line nipping at its heels. The poor performance at low resolutions earns the ATI driver team a stern look.
Quake III Arena
Jedi Knight II is out this Friday, proving there’s life yet in the Quake III Arena engine.
While the processor is the limiting factor for NVIDIA’s recent offerings at 640×480, there’s a hint that even at this low resolution, something else is holding the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE back.
At the mid-range 1024×768 resolution, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE just edges past the Ti 200.
At 1600×1200, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE manages to stay a hair ahead of the Ti 200. More than 60 frames per second at this resolution is pretty impressive in its own right, though.
Serious Sam
Serious Sam concludes our real-world game testing.
At low resolutions, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE still can’t keep up with the NVIDIA cards.
At 1024×768, things don’t get much better, and the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE is stuck behind the GeForce4 MX 440.
At our highest resolution of 1600×1200, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE still can’t catch the GeForce4 MX 440, and it only just manages to exceed 30 frames per second.
SPECviewperf
Hercules doesn’t list business or 3D professionals as target customers for the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE, but we’ve thrown SPEC’s viewperf suite of professional 3D tests at the card anyway.
The 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE lays a beating down on NVIDIA’s offerings in the ProCDRS test, but spends the rest of its time behind the curve. Overall, things even out and put the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE even with NVIDIA’s mid-range offerings.
Video signal quality
Using a Matrox card has made me a bit of a video signal quality snob when it comes to graphics cards. I spend hours a day staring at text and graphics on a screen, and I want that experience to be as easy on my eyes as possible.
ATI’s graphics offerings have always had great video quality, but then ATI has always made the cards themselves. In letting third party manufacturers produce cards, there’s a danger that manufacturers will use sub-par parts that could sacrifice signal quality. Fortunately, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE’s video signal quality is among the best I’ve seen. To my eye, the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE’s picture quality is almost as good as the latest GeForce4 MX 440 offering from eVGA.com, and that’s saying a lot since I’d rank the GeForce4 MX 440 right behind Matrox in terms of subjective visual goodness. Unfortunately, no one has been able to match Matrox’s text quality, especially after extended viewing periods.
Overclocking
The fact that Hercules has effectively underclocked the memory speed on the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE makes it a ripe candidate for clock manipulation. Just to be fair, we tweaked the core clock a little, too. In the end, we were only able to get our card’s memory up to 250MHz, which is where the Hynix chips are supposed to top out anyway. It’s a little disappointing that we couldn’t go past 250MHz, but we fared much better with the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE’s core speed, which went all the way up to 295MHz. That’s almost a 20% increase in core clock speed—not bad for a chip with a tiny glued-on heat sink/fan.
How does the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE perform with overclocking essentially limited to the graphics core?
The clock boost is just enough to put the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE out in the lead in 3DMark 2001 SE.
In Quake III Arena, the overclocking helps, but the 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE still can’t catch the GeForce3. It would have been really nice to have a little more headroom with the memory here.
Conclusion
It’s ironic that ATI names its multi-monitor implementation Hydravision, because the Radeon 8500LE is a two-headed beast when it comes to performance. On one hand, Hercules’ 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE excels in 3DMark 2001SE, where its full DirectX 8.1 implementation shines. On the other hand, in Quake III, Serious Sam, and GLMark, performance is nothing special—even poor at low resolutions.
So what’s the problem? Probably drivers, specifically for OpenGL. That’s what I’m suspecting, given the kind of behavior that ATI-based cards have exhibited in the past. Were this a review of ATI’s Radeon 8500LE, I might be harsher. However, this is an examination of Hercules’ implementation of ATI’s chip, and there’s only so much I can penalize a card manufacturer for ATI’s drivers, which are improving.
The 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE runs $140 on Pricewatch, which is pretty standard for 64MB Radeon 8500LEs. For comparison’s sake, you can pick up a GeForce3 Ti 200 for about $15 less. Paying the extra $15 for the 3D Prophet FDX gets you support for multiple displays, DVI and S-Video outputs, great DVD playback, and picture quality that’s among the best. You also get a more complete DirectX 8.1 implementation than in NVIDIA’s GeForce3 line, which may become more important with newer games.
Unfortunately, ATI’s drivers hold back the otherwise-excellent 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE. (And I have a strangely compelling feeling ATI’s newest drivers may have improved OpenGL performance.) The Prophet is a great Radeon 8500LE implementation, at a great price, and certainly worth considering if you’re in the market for a mid-range graphics card.
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