INTRODUCTION

"All TNT boards are the same." You have probably heard someone say that about nVidia RIVA TNT based solutions. Of course, for those of you who require TV-out capabilities, this statement obviously does not hold true; however, there are many TV-out capable boards which are many times classified as "identical". As for the non-TV-out capable boards, they are too, classified as "identical". The model Hercules Dynamite TNT board reviewed at Anandtech fell into the into the non-TV-out classification of the plethora of TNT boards. The question is: Is the Hercules Dynamite TNT board "identical"?

Being the first manufacturer to release cards based on the Rendition V2200, 3dfx Voodoo Rush, and S3 Savage 3D, calling Hercules the imitator would be a mistake. Hercules, did not; however, bring us the first nVidia RIVA TNT based board. Does THIS mean that Hercules is now the imitator? Looking at Hercules track record of V2200 boards running 10mhz faster than the competition, and new S3 Savage 3D boards running at 120+mhz, compared to the "industry standard" 100mhz, Hercules shouldn't disappoint. Did they? I think not...

Click here to find lowest prices on this product.

Click here to find lowest prices on this product.

Prelude to Performance

The Dynamite TNT came in an OEM (white box) box with a CD containing the drivers (as well as the drivers for every other Hercules product), a registration card, and a pretty hefty installation guide. When I looked into the installation guide I realized that the reason it was so hefty is because, as with the CD-driver, the manual covered installation for every Hercules board in English and German. The manual does cover the installation process in detail and is very thorough, unfortunately, combining the installation of all the Hercules boards into one manual makes it very difficult to find what you are looking for. Don't expect to be able to skim through the installation guide to the part you need; the index is there for a reason.

Despite the manual's short comings, the installation of the board went well. I opened the box, installed the board in the system, and booted up. Upon bootup, the board was detected as an nVidia RIVA TNT, which was fine for the moment. I went to Hercules' site to download the latest drivers and installed those using the install program, rebooted, and everything went well. (The CD did not come with the latest driver version) The drivers seemed to be nVidia reference drivers with a front end added on by Hercules (in the form of Hercules Power Tools).

The Hercules Power Tools are an excellent addition, allowing for OpenGL and D3D tweaks, plus the Hercumeter, which allows for easy overclocking of the Dynamite TNT. Speaking of overclocking, the Dynamite TNT is defaulted to 98mhz clock, 125mhz memory, as opposed to the default 90/110 for competing TNT boards. This was a good move by Hercules because the board runs rock stable at 98/125, plus performance is significantly faster. As a matter of fact, Anandtech got the Hercules board running stable at 110/125 without any extra cooling. Also, the Hercules utilities managed to work flawlessly with all the extra tabs added from the Creative Labs TNT (Colorific and 3Deep), not that they shouldn't be able to... Hercules also supplies Power tools with 'Speedy', a quick easy to use 2D benchmark which tests basic GDI performance, such as Raster ops, screen to screen blit, memory to screen blit, text operations, polygon filled speed, etc. The OEM version Anandtech reviewed did not come with any games bundle. There wasn't really anything missing from the drivers, though I would have liked to have seen the overclocking slider engine clock speed go past 115, for those who want to super cool their board. Speaking of cooling, the Dynamite TNT fan managed to keep the card noticeably cooler than the Creative Labs TNT board while running games according to the unprofessional finger test. Hopefully I'll have some better temperature measuring equipment available soon...

Click here to find lowest prices on this product.

Performance

All tests were conducted on a Pentium II/400mhz w/

64MB RAM

5.1GIG WD CAVIAR UDMA drive

Windows 98

Quake2 3.19 demo1.dm2

Latest drivers for all products

The Dynamite TNT board is faster than both the creative board and the Erazor II even when "underclocked". Running at the default configuration of 98mhz clock, 125mhz RAM (98/125), the Dynamite TNT is quite a bit faster than the competition. Even though the Dynamite TNT is faster, there really isn't a noticeable difference between these cards at 640x480.

At 800x600, the default clocked Dynamite TNT pulls away. Clearly, the extra 8mhz on the clock are making a difference.

The Dynamite TNT is over 3fps faster than the nearest competitor, and the only card to break 40fps at 1024x768. The Dynamite TNT will please even the keenest eye at 1024x768.

At 32bit color, the Dynamite 98/125 absolutely demolishes the competition. This is most likely due to an increase in clock speed and the significant increase in memory speed. Since a limiting factor of 32bit color mode with the TNT is bandwidth, upping the memory clock should make a significant impact on the performance, and it does.

Performance Analysis

The Dynamite TNT is clearly the fastest TNT board in this test, in many cases scoring significantly higher than the competition. Of course, the Dynamite TNT can be considered overclocked; but, the board are stable enough to run at Hercules' default speed, and warranty is not voided. In other words, Hercules guarantees that the Dynamite TNT will run @ 98/125 and is willing to back it up with the 5 year warranty available. Regarding the 32bit performance, it looks as if RAM speed makes a difference after all.

Price

The Dynamite TNT retail can be purchased directly from Hercules for $139 with a 30 day money back guarantee and 5 year warranty. This price is already pretty good, and street prices for OEM (white box) models are even cheaper making the Dynamite TNT not only the fastest TNT board, but one of the cheapest as well.

Overclocked Performance

I decided to find out how high I could push the Dynamite TNT without applying extra cooling.

115/125 failed to complete demo1.dm2.

Upping the clock speed from a default 98mhz to 110mhz yielded a significant increase of around 10% without any apparent loss in stability. The demo completed multiple times with no noticeable tearing. It looks as if the cooling on the Dynamite TNT is more than adequate.

Impact of Memory speed on 32bit performance

Raising the memory clock speed 15mhz yielded an increase of almost 4 fps. This strongly suggests that bandwidth is the limiting the TNT's 32bit performance. The following chart should reinforce this conclusion.

Raising the memory clock speed by 15mhz only yielded a 1.2fps increase when running in 16bit color as opposed to the 3.5fps increase when running demo1.dm2 in 32bit color.

Click here to find lowest prices on this product.

There has been some concern about lack of Incoming/Forsaken benchmarks. I excluded these benchmarks from my tests because they are based on obsolete single pass rendering architectures (which virtually no one uses anymore), consist of very low polygon counts (poor tests of triangle processing), and run at insanely high frame rates at high resolutions on any of the latest cards that performance in the difference in 3rd generation (G200 and on) card performance in these games is not noticeable. There are other multitextured games out there, such as Half-life, and Unreal, which include frame-rate counters, but these games are either not complete (Unreal D3D drivers are not mature enough) or consist of very high polygon counts which stresses CPU rather than video accelerator (Half-Life). Quake2 demo1.dm2, on the other hand, has an excellent balance between triangle processing and fill-rate, so it ensures that the scenes aren't to simple, while ensuring that the CPU won't get bogged down as well.

Conclusion

In the performance department, the Dynamite TNT cannot be beat, since you are getting a card which is running 8mhz faster than the competition. Of the TNT boards I have tested, I see no reason why a performance gamer would settle for anything but the Dynamite TNT. To think that the Dynamite TNT board is only an option for performance gamers is a mistake, because with an excellent retail price, and even better street price, the Dynamite TNT rivals the Creative Lab's RIVA TNT solution for cheapest board on the market. Hercules has managed to give us a high performance card at a low price, and for that they deserve my recommendation.

Performance: 97%

Quality: 90%

Documentation: 75%

Value: 95%

Overall Impression: 95%

Click here to find lowest prices on this product.