Hercules has stuck very close to the NVIDIA reference design with their 3D Prophet II MX card. The board shares the same basic PCB shape and size as the reference card, though Hercules has spiced it up a bit by using a blue PCB instead of the standard green. The heatsink colored blue to match the rest of the board. The 3D Prophet II MX is also quite a bit smaller than any previous GeForce product. In fact, its PCB is less than half that of a GeForce 256 PCB and ensures easy installation as well as exceptional case airflow.

Due to the concerns about memory bandwidth, it's nice to see that Hercules has clocked the memory on the 3D Prophet II MX a bit higher than with the reference design. While NVIDIA calls for a 166MHz memory speed, Hercules has jacked that up to 183MHz with the 3D Prophet II MX, raising the potential memory bandwidth from 2.7GB/s to approximately 2.9GB/s. Granted, it's not a huge jump in bandwidth, but every little bit helps. To ensure that this increase in memory speed would be within spec, our review card featured 32MB of 5.5ns Hyundai memory, rather than the conventional 6ns speed. Due to the design of the GeForce2 MX, this memory is of the SDR variety and runs on a 128-bit bus. It should be noted that these specs refer to the retail model of the 3D PROPHET II MX and that the OEM version only uses a 166MHz memory speed.

The Hercules 3D Prophet 2 MX is more of a standard 3D card than a pure business or multimedia solution, and tends to be more utilitarian in nature. As such, it does not support the TwinView technology of the GeForce2 MX. This is a display format that is very similar to Matrox' DualHead in that it allows the use of two displays with the same video card. If this feature is important to your overall buying decision, then the 3D Prophet II MX might not be the card for you. On the other hand, gamers are still getting all the main 3D features of the GeForce2 MX and saving a few bucks along the way.

The Hercules 3D Prophet II MX is definitely a gamer's card, and this fact is readily apparent when you open the box. There are virtually no amenities, and the retail box only contains the 3D Prophet II MX card, a 48-page user manual and a driver CD. The user manual is in several languages so the 48-page total actually turns out to be only 15 pages in length. The driver CD includes the Hercules drivers (really just the NVIDIA reference drivers with some cosmetic enhancements), an online version of the manual, the 3Deep desktop utility and a few 3D game demos such as Thief 2, Daikatana and Rayman. Forgetting the free demos, Hercules has not included any sort of game bundle with the 3D Prophet II MX. Whether this is viewed as a positive or negative depends entirely on your point of view. New computer buyers probably will not like the fact that there are not any bundled games to try out on their new hardware, but seasoned gamers will see it as a positive, cost-saving measure.