Posted on Friday, July 26 2002 @ 23:08 CEST by Thomas De MaesschalckHercules is delighted to announce the latest members of its award-winning 3D Prophet family: the 3D Prophet 9000 and 3D Prophet 9700 series. The 3D Prophet 9000 series contains graphics accelerators based on Radeon™ 9000 and 9000 Pro processors - unique technology designed by ATI for accelerating 3D in life-like, virtual reality games. The 3D Prophet 9700 series is based on ATI’s highly anticipated Radeon™ 9700. It provides hardware acceleration with the ultimate in 3D innovation and access to the latest features available in 3D graphics technology.
"Hercules’ objective is to offer unlimited performance in 3D gaming entertainment. The 3D Prophet 9000 series boosts the frames-per-second rate in games and provides gamers with a set of life-like effects. By designating the Radeon™ 9700 as our new flagship 3D accelerator board, we are offering hardcore gamers the reference platform for new 3D APIs. The 3D Prophet 9700 accelerates new 3D environments using Microsoftâ DirectX 9, which enhances realism in games and offers an unprecedented speed upgrade," says Claude Guillemot, President of Hercules.
The 3D Prophet 9000 and 9000 Pro series architecture is based on 4 texturing pipelines - texturing triangles animated by a hardware Vertex Shader - and achieves per pixel programmable effects through a hardware Pixel Shader. This architecture combines: · the power of a quad-pipeline rendering engine, · a state-of-the-art hardware Vertex Shader to handle the massive geometric complexity of new games, · a Pixel Shader to add per pixel shadows that help create life-like textures and the most realistic water and lighting effects on the smallest of objects such as fur, hair or blades of grass · a solid video playback hardware, which decodes MPEG2 for DVD, de-interlaces video for display on a TV and enhances online video playback. The 3D Prophet 9000 series means faster games and realistic texturing effects thanks to its large texturing engine and its’ Microsoftâ DirectXâ 8 hardware acceleration.
The 3D Prophet 9700 is the strongest 3D accelerator for demanding gamers. Radeon™ 9700 architecture has enough 3D processing power to turn a workstation green with envy: · 3D Prophet 9700 has a large rendering engine of 8 pipelines, with 16 textures maps per pass, and fuelled by a 256-bit DDR RAM interface. · Microsoft DirectX 9 hardware acceleration is processed by 8 Pixel Shader engines and 4 Vertex Shader engines. · Catalyst drivers offer the user an interface for controlling the 3D features and provide regular updates for the gamers.
Availability 3D Prophet 9000 series will be available in August. 3D Prophet 9700 will be available in September.
Bron :
· Hercules Website
