It's easy to find a good graphics card. Just go to your nearest PC shop and fork out £350. You'll get a GeForce 3-based card that will impress you and your friends and make mincemeat of any game you throw at it. But for that price, you'd want it to cook the mincemeat as well - and wash up afterwards.

If you want GeForce 3 power and expense, Hercules can certainly offer it with its high-end cards but budget buyers should look to its 3D Prophet 4500 instead. It's not as hot as the GeForce 3 but at around a third of the price, it has a lot going for it.

Fitting the 3D Prophet is no different to fitting any other expansion card; it's a simple matter of removing the old and adding the new. It fits in the AGP slot on the motherboard, a specialised socket designed exclusively for graphics cards. But if your PC has no AGP port, you're going to struggle playing the hottest games.

The thing that makes the 3D Prophet 4500 a good choice is the way in which it draws images. Traditionally, graphics cards draw everything that is on screen. That includes the things you can see and those you can't because they are behind other objects or tucked away. That means your graphics card is working hard to put lots of extra information on screen that simply isn't needed.

The 3D Prophet 4500 is smarter than that. It just draws the things that are in view. So, it does a lot less work for the same or a better result.

Because of the economical way in which 3D Prophet 4500 works, games can be run at higher resolutions or with extra detail switched on without spoiling the game. Other cards that cost a similar amount, such as the GeForce 2 MX, perform poorly in comparison. Our lab tests bear that out, too, showing that the 3D Prophet 4500 can outperform cards that cost £100 more.

If you're looking to improve your PC's gaming potential on a budget, 3D Prophet 4500 is a great place to start. It will turn your PC into something of a thoroughbred for the price of an old nag.

Contact: Guillemot
020 8686 5600
www.hercules.com