Hercules to make ATI cards

Hercules has announced that it will soon base its performance graphics card line on ATI Radeon 8500 instead of Nvidia's chips. While the card maker has been known in the past for its high performance and overclockable Nvidia-based designs, Nvidia-based products are completely absent from the new Hercules card line. The company's entry-level cards will follow the Kyro II design, with Hercules-branded Radeon 8500 cards for the performance segment.

While ATI has traditionally been the only producer of graphics cards based on its chip designs, the company announced last summer that it would shift gears to license chips and board designs to third parties. Taiwanese board makers, such as Gigabyte, FIC, and others, also recently announced that they would make graphics cards based on ATI's Radeon 8500.

A company representative attributed the move from GeForce3 to Radeon 8500 cards to the ATI chip's "better DirectX 8.1 support." The graphics card market has become very competitive between third-party card makers, and card makers must compete on distinctive features as well as price and performance. Hercules' Radeon 8500 cards should first appear next month in Europe, with US shipments in late February to early March.