

I received my Graphite VL on Thursday, and I've had a little bit of 
experience with it now.  In general, it feels *FAST*, although this
is the first VLB card that I have tried.  Still, the results are 
impressive.

With my 486DX2/66 w/16 MB, running at 1024x768/256, I've had the following
WinTach 1.0 results:


Card				WP	CAD	Spread	Paint	Overall
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
ATI Graphics Ultra		13.5	14.5	19.1	25.0	18.0
ATI Ultra+ (no aperture)	11.2	13.8	10.7	20.9	14.1
Hercules Graphite VL		16.1	67.8	41.4	52.8	44.5

Unfortunately I don't have the numbers here, but the ATI Ultra Pro VLB
had an overall WinTach score of about 26.  The Ultra Pro was nearly as
fast in text handling, but was blown away in the CAD and Paint tests.

As an additional test, we hand-timed a complex CorelDraw! slide resize/-
redraw times.  There was no swapping, but I'd expect there is a fairly
heavy load on the CPU.  The Graphite redraw times averaged about 10.2
seconds, with ATI Ultra Pro at 12.0.  This jives with Steve Gibson's
contention that the ISA Graphite is faster than an ATI UP on his complex
Micrografx Draw document.

So far, I'm *very* impressed.  The drivers look solid, and the card flies.
The installation and utilities are different, but comparable to ATI's.  And
I didn't have to wait for Build 59 for some reliability...  With Hercules'
software developer special, you can get an evaluation copy of the card for
just $225 (or $200 for the ISA version).  Call 800-532-0600 if you want to
give it a try -- I'm a happy customer now!
