Hercules backs ATI
Radeon Prophet?
Hercules has announced its plan to license ATI's ALL-IN-WONDER products, including the ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 8500 DV, and produce cards based on the reference design. Obviously this is a big move for the company, whose NVIDIA-based products have been among the most revered of all the NVIDIA-licensed cards. "Our agreement with Hercules is proof that ATI is accepted as a leading provider of graphics acceleration technology for the gaming community," said ATI President and Chief Operating Officer Dave Orton, and he's right. The interesting thing here is that Hercules haven't abandoned NVIDIA, but have just chosen to manufacture cards based on another competitor's solution. A while ago, there were rumours that NVIDIA were putting the squeeze on Hercules for choosing to support STMicroelectronics' Kyro and Kyro II chipsets. They may discover that the same tactics don't work in this situation however, because by doing so they merely encourage one of their biggest customers to move closer to the competition. Let's be clear, ATI is more competition to NVIDIA than Videologic and STMicroelectronics, but if the GeForce giant wants to stay in the driving seat, they need to rekindle their relationship with Hercules and solidify some sort of agreement to benefit them. As it stands, Hercules Radeon boards will cost less than Hercules GeForce boards, and the performance difference is questionable. That can't be good news for NVIDIA. Hercules on the other hand, will be laughing all the way to the bank, and they will start to do so in February of this year…