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Hercules 9000 Pro All-In-Wonder


Date
: 05/4/03 – 11:52:41 AM

Author
:

Category
: Video Cards

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer: Hercules / Guillemot
Price: Around $250

Introduction

A couple of months ago, Overclockers Online tested the ATI Radeon 9000 PRO, and as the review showed, the card performed excellent for what is called a low budget graphics solution.

Now, a couple of months later, we had the chance to check out a new video card from the peeps over at Hercules based on that exact same GPU, the ATI Radeon 9000 PRO. Only this time, it is NOT a just a "bare" video card. Not at all actually. Today, we're taking the Hercules 3D Prophet 9000 PRO All-In-Wonder for a test drive to check out what the card is capable of.

If you dig video cards loaded with features, this product certainly won't let you down on this point. Please move on to the next page and enjoy the ride …

Page 2 : Specifications

Specifications

It's always a good thing to know the specifications of a card directly from the manufacturer's website. Here's the copy/paste from the Hercules website :

Graphics processor
: ATI Radeon 9000 PRO

Processing technology
: 0.15µ

Memory
: 64MB on-board DDR RAM

Memory/Core interface
: 128-bit DDR

Bus AGP
: 2X/4X

Rendering pipelines
: 4

DirectX 3D hardware
: DirectX 8.1

OpenGL version
: OpenGL1.3

Video & audio decoding/encoding
: THEATER 200
- Video decoder
- Stereo audio processor
- S/PDIF output

Input & output options

Input connection adapter:
- Composite video & stereo audio input
- S-Video (S-VHS) input
Output adapter:
- Composite video & stereo audio output
- S-Video (S-VHS) output
- DVI-I to VGA adapter

The picture below will give you a good idea of all the things you can connect to the All-In-Wonder Radeon 9000 PRO :

Detailed Specs

So what exactly has Hercules included in their All-In-Wonder (A-I-W) package? Here's a list with all the stuff I found inside the cardboard box :

- The Hercules Radeon 9000 PRO A-I-W card
- A modest, but clearly written user manual
- Universal driver/software CDROM
- Ulead Video Studio 5.0SE CDROM
- A DVI to VGA converter
- Remote control (USB)
- An 'external' box with audio/video connections
- TV-Out cables
- (some bonus stickers)

The user manual isn't going to provide you with hours and hours of reading pleasure, but it does contain the necessary information you need to install the card and the drivers properly. It's actually all too easy : Plug the card in your AGP slot, put the driver CDROM in your CDROM drive and let the installation wizard do its work ;) Although it is not really necessary, I would however strongly advise you to download the latest driver (or software) from the ATI website. It's always a good thing to have the latest, most stable and fastest drivers (or software)! The CDROM also offers a wide range of applications to use with the specific All-In-Wonder features. Don't worry, we'll discus these features in a minute. But now at least you know that the CDROM contains everything you need to operate the huge feature load. Hercules have also included a video editing application from Ulead that goes by the name 'Video Studio 5.0SE'.

As you might remember from our initial ATI Radeon 9000 card review, the Radeon 9000 comes in two flavors : the Radeon 9000 and the Radeon 9000 PRO, which Hercules has put on the card we're checking out in this review. The main differences are the clock and memory speeds. The "PRO" comes with a core speed of 275MHz and a memory speed of 275MHz DDR (550MHz), whereas the cheaper version comes with a 250MHz core and 200MHz DDR memory (400MHz). The All-In-Wonder 9000 PRO is clocked at the same speeds as the original Radeon 9000 PRO.

Because it would be a waste of time to completely rewrite the specific Radeon 9000 PRO GPU features, I'll just copy/paste them from our ATI Radeon 9000 PRO review since that card uses the exact same GPU :

The Hercules 9000 PRO A-I-W comes with 64MB of Infineon DDR SGRAM onboard, spread over 4 memory chips of 16MB each which are located at the top side of the green PCB. The memory is rated at 3.6ns, which means that the memory will be able to run at 275MHz DDR (550MHz). 3.6ns memory will do just fine since the a Radeon 9000 PRO runs at exactly 275MHz DDR (550MHz), but I'm wondering how this will affect the overclocking potential of the card. More about this on the next page later on …

So what does the "All-In-Wonder" stand for? Well, simply because you actually get a number of separate cards combined into one video card that can do it all! With this card you can transform your PC into a TV and VCR system ;) All TV cards and video cards with TV-tuner capabilities consist out of 2 major parts : the TV-Tuner and a A/D converter chip. The tuner unit, in this case made by Philips, analyzes the incoming signal and decodes the television signal. This signal is then passed on to the second part of the card which is called the Analogue-to-Digital converter chip. The A/D chip handles the conversion from the analogue television signal it got from the tuner into digital data. Your favorite channel can now travel throughout the entire system. While most add-on TV cards (like the Hercules Smart-TV : reviewed here) come with an A/D converter chip from Conexant/Brooktree, this A-I-W video card comes with ATI's very own Theater 200 A/D chip. ATI's Multimedia Center software package turns this video card into an easy to use Stereo TV tuner with integrated Teletext and Timeshifting functions. The VCR feature allows you to capture up to 25fps in 720 X 576 (PAL) mode.

One thing that puts a little bit of a negative shadow on an All-In-Wonder package like this 3D Prophet 9000 is the lack of dual monitor support. The backplate of card has one DVI output (NO regular VGA output). Of course). Of course, Hercules realizes that not everyone can afford a sweet but still expensive flatpanel display so they also include a DVI to VGA converter. Furthermore the backplate has a coaxial input to hook up your TV antenna, a connector to plug in the audio/video-in/out cables and a connection to feed the external audio/video-in box.

One last item I want to talk about is the RF remote control. The remote comes with a USB receiver that you just plug in a free USB port. You can easily customize the items you wish remotely control, but most of the time you'll only be using it to remotely play/pause a DVD movie or something like that.

Now, let's do some overclocking … can't wait no more …

Page 3 : Installation & Overclocking

Installation & Overclocking

Installation

First you need to get your video card in your AGP slot and hook up every cable you wish to use. I'm talking about the external box, the TV antenna, the remote USB receiver, and so on. Next step is to install the drivers and software. This step didn't turn out to be as straight forward as I thought it would be. I already mentioned you should always get the latest ATI drivers and ATI control panel from the ATI website. So I did and I immediately installed both items. Then I put in the Hercules driver CDROM and let the wizard do its job after unchecking the ATI driver & control panel from the "items to be installed" list, because we don't want to overwrite the latest drivers we installed before … one minute later, the driver/software installation was completed and I had to reboot my system.

Now you'd think everything should work, right? Well, guess what? Although I had full 2D and 3D performance, my Windows XP Pro Device Manager kept giving me unknown hardware errors. So I went back to the ATI website and searched for a driver I might have forgotten. I couldn't find any other driver besides the driver & control panel we downloaded & installed earlier in the POWERED BY ATI section of the website. But then I went further in the BUILT BY ATI section, and there it was, a third driver called WDM Capture Driver. Installing this one solved my unknown hardware problems and resulted in a fully working Hercules 9000 PRO All-In-Wonder!

So far my personal experiences. Why isn't the WDM Capture Driver included in the setup wizard on the CDROM? And why doesn't ATI put the driver on the POWERED BY ATI part of their website? Well, beats me!

Overclocking

We chose to overclock the Radeon 9000 PRO A-I-W by using a video card overclocking application such as Powerstrip to crank up the core clock and/or memory speed.

I always start my overclocking adventures by increasing the default core/memory speeds (in this case 275/550) in small increments. That's the easiest way to determine when a card reaches its limit. This also helps us to find out which part is causing crashes or lockups when pushing the card to hard.

Because the card lacks RAM sinks and a big GPU cooler, I didn't expect it to overclock all that much. But after a couple of hours of fooling around with the core/memory settings I finally got our sample stable at 300MHz core and 600MHz (300MHz DDR) memory speed. That makes the core run at 25MHz higher than stock speed while the memory is about 50MHz overclocked. Any faster setting would result in visual artifacts and a complete 3DMark2001 benchmark lockup after the first few tests. When you add better cooling to the GPU and put some RAM sinks on the memory, I have no doubt that you will be able to squeeze out a even few extra MHz.

Now let's see have a look at how the video card handles our torture benchmarks …

Page 4 : Testing

Benchmarking

Test System

- Intel Pentium4 1.6A @ 2.13GHz CPU
- ABIT IT7 MAX (i845E) motherboard
- Crucial 256MB DDR PC2100 memory
- Hercules 9000 Pro All-In-Wonder video card
- Western Digital 20GB 7200RPM
- MS Windows XP Pro SP1
- CATALYST RADEON 3.2 (7.84) Display Drivers

3DMARK2001 – 32BIT

Quake 3 Arena v1.17 – Demo001

Quake 3 Arena v1.17 – Torture Demo

Aquamark

Novalogic Comanche4 Benchmark

Page 5 : Conclusion

Conclusion

Good

- Good overall 2D and 3D performance
- TV Tuner
- Remote control
- A fully featured & complete package
- Price is right for what you get

Bad

- No RAM sinks / overclocking
- No Dual-display
- Might not satisfy a hardcore gamer

When we look at this card in terms of price and performance/features, we can only say that the Hercules 9000 Pro All-In-Wonder is well worth the money. Not only does it feature the ATI Radeon 9000 PRO entry level GPU which is more than powerful enough to run all recent/near future games, the package will also add a truckload of multimedia features like TV, VCR, DVD and remote control to your system. Too bad the card lacks dual-display support. If you are an occasional games looking for a great video card with sweet 2D display quality, good 3D performance, and perhaps even more important, TV & multimedia functionality, then the Hercules 9000 Pro All-In-Wonder package could be what you're looking for!