While Creative and Diamond made the safe "nVidia approved" play regarding their part's shipping clock speeds, Hercules is about to throw a large monkeywrench into the whole machine, by having the world's fastest video card hit retail shelves in just two short weeks from today.

How fast does a card have to be to officially be the world's fastest?

Currently 3dfx's Voodoo3 3000 board holds the title and checks in at a "ready" 166MHz. (Ring announcer Michael Buffer always says "ready" when describing a boxer's weight in pounds before a pay per view bout, it applies here as well)

If 166MHz buys you the title for now, all that's necessary to rip it away is a raw speed level that's one MHz faster, i.e. 167MHz.

The Hercules Dynamite TNT2 Ultra comes set to a default core clock speed of 175MHz. Its SDRAM is set to run at 200MHz.

That's fast. Very fast.

It gets better.

Thanks to Hercules' and nVidia's close relationship, Hercules has told Sharky Extreme that they're confident enough in nVidia's TNT2 Ultra chip yield quality that they believe consumers will be able to overclock their Dynamite TNT2's to 185MHz+ using the card's drivers, which have a special feature called the "Hercumeter".

We first saw the Hercumeter in use with the Beast Supercharged, a product we gave high marks to for its ease of use and strong overclockability. By using the simplistic sliders, users are able to experiment with their particular Dynamite TNT2 card to find its exact sweet spot (the spot that offers the most reliability while still faster than the stock speed level.)

Much like the previous Beast S/C, this new Dynamite TNT2 Ultra card from Hercules delivered on the company's claims and even exceeded them slightly in our hands…