3D Accelerator Card Reviews

Hercules Dynamite 3D/GL

The new Dynamite 3D/GL is using 3DLabs :Permedia 2 chip, so that shows you where to put the Dynamite 3D/GL, it's pretty much Hercules' first professional card for a long while. 3DLabs' Permedia 2 is known for very good 2D performance, the best OpenGL performance in this price group and a pretty good Direct3D performance as well, although it's not offering the highest 3D image quality due to some missing features.

I am happy to see a Hercules product with this chip, which in my eyes is one of the best 3D chips currently available, unless you're a hardcore gamer who doesn't care for anything else.

Due to the fact that I've only received the card here in Fremont, CA, it will take until after Comdex to run tests and benchmarks, but we could expect higher results than with Diamond's Fire GL 1000 Pro, because the Permedia 2 chip is clocked with 90 MHz or even more against only 83 MHz in case of the Diamond card.

Stay tuned until then.

Hercules Stingray 128/3D

Hercules' Stingray 128/3D has been totally revamped and is now comingas a one card solution. This is supposed to improve or even eliminate the performance problems of the Voodoo Rush chip from 3Dfx, compared to the Voodoo. The Stingray 128/3D would become very interesting, if this should be the case, because it comes with 8 MB RAM, 4 MB shared frame buffer for the Alliance AT25 and the Voodoo Rush and 4 MB texture memory (28 ns !!!) for the Voodoo Rush alone. This should warrant very good performance as well as a 3D resolution of up to 800x600 against the 640x480 of the normal Voodoo cards, of course as long as the system is fast enough for that.

The Stingray 128/3D also offers an output for stereo glasses as well as a TV out and because it's a single card solution it's certainly an interesting candidate.