After it gobbled up 3dfx late last year, it was beginning to look as if NVIDIA would have the hardcore 3D chipset market all to itself. Matrox had retreated entirely from the gaming scene and chose to focus on 2D performance and the professional graphics user. Meanwhile, ATI continued to be slow to market with its newer chipsets while NVIDIA just kept raising the bar on 3D performance. While pricey, the GeForce3 is the undisputed king of the benchmark hill.

But while NVIDIA keeps its eye on dominating that hilltop, STMicroelectronics has slipped into the mid-range plateau with a real surprise price/performance winner. Its Kyro II chipset drives the moderately priced Hercules Prophet 4500 card, and it brings to the $129-$150 ($149 list) price point a remarkable level of performance. Go to the benchmarks if you can't wait for the details, but generally we found the card handily outperformed a similarly priced GeForce2MX card.

The Kyro II gets its cheap speed by using a tile-based approach to 3D rendering. Rather than draw all aspects of an on-screen 3D image, its "Hidden Surface Removal" routines only render the pieces that are being seen at any given time. It also uses less costly SDRAM memory, but packs the card with 64MB something you might not expect to find in a mid-range card.

The 4500 model has no digital output nor TV in or out, although another model is available for $10 more that does include TV/out. The driver and software suite is...shall we say...economical. Two tabs are added to your display properties window with tools for adjusting screen positioning, gamma and 3D effects in DirectX and OpenGL gaming. A Temple demo is included that shows off the card's effects and the common 3Deep color correction software comes on the CD as well.

The card is now shipping with a full copy of Myst III: Exile, a game that appropriately caters to the type of mid-range casual gamer that Hercules is looking to attract with this card. And given the already low price of this card, the inclusion of a recent and well-received games makes it an even better value.

Less adequate is the hard copy manual, which gives the barest installation instructions and no troubleshooting tips. A more thorough online manual can be loaded to your hard drive from the install CD, but what good will that do a consumer if his PC won't boot properly with the new card? No such disaster occurred in our case... The install routine went smoothly. Still, hardware manufacturers really need to step up their user friendliness for the general public.