Here’s another company that managed to steer their way through the crowd thanks to the success of their original TNT card, in this case the Dynamite TNT. Hercules, too, have come up with a TNT2 sequel, called (unsurprisingly) the Dynamite TNT2. Seeing that this is the final TNT2 card in this roundup, you’re probably wondering what this thing is going to offer you. Well, to begin with, Hercules should be proud of themselves because they’re the only company which managed to deliver an actual 175/200MHz TNT2 Ultra board- that is, the only board to offer the speeds that nVidia originally announced for the Ultra TNT2.
 

However, keep in mind it was nVidia that later lowered the clock speeds of the Ultra TNT2 based cards down to 150/183MHz, probably deciding it was better being safe than sorry.  But they did allow the card manufacturers to set higher settings for their own products, and out of that lot, so far Guillemot managed a 175MHz core but only Hercules reached a 175MHz core speed as well as a 200MHz memory clock.

OK, OK, so the Dynamite TNT2 is slightly faster in terms of overall performance thanks to it’s clock speeds. No surprise there. But how does it hold together as a graphics card? After all, there’s more to quality than raw performance.

The list price of the card is $249, the same as the Diamond Viper V770. However, Hercules is also offering a $229 version without the TV-out and a software DVD player. The card is a standard-size PCB with 16 2MB SDRAM chips, eight chips on the front and eight more on the back side, as with all the other boards, though the type of memory wasn’t EliteMT, it was Hyundai 5.5ns SDRAM. Oh, and here we go again -yet another appearance from the good old Brooktree 869 controller to power the TV-out. Yes, the $249 Dynamite TNT2 Ultra has a S-VHS TV-out connector powered by this famous video controller. Sitting on top of the TNT2 chipset is an AAVID active cooling unit, similar to those once found on the Matrox Millennium G400Max evaluation cards. But this unit also seems to have a pretty good heat sink just like the ASUS and Guillemot cards. And yes, it does a good job. So, in fact, does the memory. Hercules guarantees all their Ultra TNT2 boards at 175/200MHz as 100% stable. It’s not really a big surprise that the board was 100% stable during testing, seeing that it’s supposed to run at that speed. Even the Xentor 32 and the Viper V770 were also very stable at this setting, and keep in mind, the Viper V770 is a 150/183MHz card. 

The installation is simple enough, the driver CD carries out an auto-run installation similar to that of the Diamond Viper V770 Ultra. Afterwards, the Hercules touch desktop management utilities will be added along with the MoniTune utility for customized monitors. Sadly, the package doesn’t include any games or demos.  But more importantly, the Dynamite has a built-in overclocking utility called the HercuMeter to take the card up some more. Now, of course, you’re wondering about the limit... at what level will this thing submit? Well, at 183/210MHz (our favorite setting) the Hercules Dynamite TNT2 Ultra was fully 100% stable.

 
Afterwards, I took it up some more till it started locking up, and the maximum I reached was 195/225MHz. Wow. Now that’s a lot of power, giving you a fill rate of more than 380 million pixels/sec. That’s a lot, and the board is really stable too at this setting. Does that sound great or what? What did I say our favorite setting was? Ah, never mind... I’ll move to 195/225MHz. Anything else is old news…he he. 

DVD performance on the card is smooth, with good video quality. The 2D desktop is also impressive, the image quality at 1024x768 and 1600x1200 at 32-bit color can be compared to the Diamond Viper V770 Ultra and the Creative 3D Blaster TNT2 Ultra. When it comes to 3D performance, the board is the fastest, no doubt about it, and it doesn’t have any driver problems either. Even the 2D benchmark scores are among the highest, so in terms of performance it’s an absolute winner. Does it look as if we had saved the best for last? Well, not really; I arranged the five card roundup in alphabetical order and Hercules came in last... But it sounded nice.. he he.