Hercules Graphite
Hercules' first Graphite card arrived in 1993, leveraging the AGX014 chipset from IIT - it supported a maximum resolution of 1280 x 1024 in 16.7 million colours.
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Released | 1993 |
| Bus | ISA 16-bit | |
| Chipset | IIT AGX014 | |
| Standards | VGA | |
| Memory | 1 MB VRAM | |
| RAMDAC | - | |
| Ports | 15-pin DSUB (analogue RGB video out) | |
| Part # | - | |
| FCC IDs | - | |
| Price | At launch: $399 (either version) Jan 1994: $229 (1 MB) or $374 (2 MB) |
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| See Also | Graphite Pro/Graphite VL Pro, Dynamite |
Using the AGX014 graphics chipset from IIT, it was the first accelerator card to fully support the XGA graphics standard ("AGX" being the reverse of "XGA"). At the time, any card/chipset that could output 800 x 600 resolution in 24-bit colour was considered quite premium. The AGX014 could handle this but with only average performance. The chipset could theoretically be expanded up to 6 MB, though this was not a user-upgradable option for the Hercules Graphite.
Its 1 MB of memory was clocked at 55 MHz.
Other cards that used the same IIT chipset include the Western Digital Paradise Accelerator Pro, Volante Warp20-2, Boca Research Vortek VL-VRAM Accelerator, and VidTech GraphMax.
Board Revisions
Competition
The Hercules Graphite competed with the ATI Graphics Ultra Pro, Number Nine GXE, Diamond Stealth Pro, and Orchid Fahrenheit VA. Compared to these cards, the Graphite was not considered a decent performer, though reducing the colour depth put it in the mid-range on Graphics Winmark tests.
In early 1993, Hercules / IIT was one of a number of graphics card manufacturers caught up in some controversy surrounding the manipulation of their drivers and even the IIT graphics chip's microcode to perform better in benchmark tests than you would otherwise see in real-world testing. One such test was the popular Winbench - drivers and microcode would contain specific text strings to identify if a benchmark test was being run, and then perform certain operations faster (or skip over them) to give the impression the card was running operations much quicker. IIT were shown to have such cheats in their AGX014 microcode.
In the Media
The Graphite card is equipped with 1MB of 80-nanosecond video random access memory (VRAM), enough memory to support up to 1,280-by-1,024 resolution with 16 colors, 1,024-by-768 with 256 colors, 800-by-600 with 65,536 colors, and 640-by-480 with 16 million colors. The fairly fast VRAM on the card allows noninterlaced operation with compatible monitors, and also minimizes flicker at higher resolutions and with more colors.
The installation of the Graphite card is simple and trouble-free. One jumper on the card enables or disables IRQ2, used by some VGA programs that are sensitive to vertical refresh. Another pair makes adjustments to deal with different ISA-bus timings.
The DOS software installation program installs the Graphite Card utilities and drivers and allows you to select timing files for optimum operation with a wide range of monitors. Under Windows, there are utilities to select and change resolution and color depth, and to fine-tune the placement and size of the screen image.
After the Graphite Card corrected two defects we found in preliminary testing, its drivers ran the card smoothly at all the available combinations of resolution and color depth. Beyond Windows, the Graphite Card has a display driver for Autodesk's AutoCAD and related products.
The Graphite Card yields a Graphics Winmark score between 10 and 15 million at 1,024-by-768 noninterlaced resolution with 256 colors, a result that makes it competitive with other cards both in and above its price range (the $399 Diamond Stealth VRAM and the $599 ATI Graphics Ultra Pro are examples).
While IBM's XGA can address up to 4MB of memory, the IIT AGX014 graphics ship is capable of addressing up to 6MB of memory, enough for 16 million colors at extremely high resolutions. In the not-too-distant future, you can anticipate other AGX-based graphics cards from Hercules with the memory needed to handle still more colors at high resolution.
The Hercules Graphite Card is one more alternative among the successful second generation of graphics cards designed specifically to speed Windows video performance. For now, it's got a good spot on what's turning out to be a rapidly improving price/performance curve."
PC Magazine, March 1993
In this round, Hercules supplied new drivers without the false optimization. The Graphite card scored a pedestrian Winmark score of 8.7 megapixels per second. However, the Graphite card eeked out the top speed of 8 minutes 26 seconds in the applications tests, nosing out the ATI Ultra Pro (when enabled to complete the tests) by 3 seconds. This card turned out the highest scores in the CorelDRAW section of the applications test, 26 seconds ahead of the #9GXE, which was last in this segment. The Graphite card ranked second of third in all the other sections of the applications test.
At a price of $399 with 1MB of VRAM memory, the Hercules Graphite gives solid performance for a reasonable price."
PC Magazine, April 1993
We award two Editor's Choice awards. One goes to the Diamond Stealth Pro, a solid performer that scored well in both areas. Based on the S3 928 chip and making use of video RAM (VRAM) memory, the Diamond card will serve you well across a broad range of Windows applications.
Our second Editor's Choice award goes to the Hercules Graphite Card, which uses the IIT AGX014 as its graphics chip. While the Hercules did not fare as well on the Graphics Winmarks as did some of the other cards in this review, it more than made up for that performance by blazing through our Windows Applications test suite. At $399, the Hercules Graphite is a solid buy that won't leave you counting pixels during a screen redraw.
The Orchid Fahrenheit VA deserves honorable mention. Using the 801 chip from S3 Corp. and cheaper and slower dynamic RAM (DRAM) memory, the Fahrenheit VA plodded through our Graphics Winmarks but still managed to come in second in our applications test suite. With a street price of $200, the budget-minded will find this card an excellent buy.
While the ATI Graphics Ultra Pro, a previous Editors' Choice winner, aced the Graphics Winmarks, it stumbled on our applications suite. Driver stability is an important issue, and too many driver revisions make us wary of recommending the ATI."
PC Magazine, July 1993
Setting it Up
I have no information on setting up the Hercules Graphite.
Downloads
Operation Manual Get in touch if you can provide this missing item! |
DOS Drivers & Utilities Disk Get in touch if you can provide this missing item! |
Windows 3.1 Driver Disk (1 MB model) Get in touch if you can provide this missing item! |
Windows 3.1 Driver Disk (2 MB model) Get in touch if you can provide this missing item! |
Win 3.1 Hercules Touch Utilities Suite Get in touch if you can provide this missing item! |
Windows NT 3.5x Driver Disk Get in touch if you can provide this missing item! |
OS/2 Warp 3.0 Driver Disk Get in touch if you can provide this missing item! |
AutoCAD 10-386+ Driver Disk Get in touch if you can provide this missing item! |
