THE FACTS:
FACT 1
Hercules MX 32 SDR $149 3DMARKS out of box 4500 (after I added 4in1)
RADEON 32MB DDR $199-$50rebate=$149 3DMARKS out of box 4400
(hum, about the same cost, newer technology, native DirectX 8 support)
FACT 2
AFTER TWEAKING the MX for 3 HOURS I was able to get 5035-5045 pretty easy, my max ONE TIME SCORE WAS 5058.
(hum, about the same scores out of the box, unsure about overclock for the RADEON, better video quality)
FACT 3 (well, and some rumors)
No one has really PROVED that the Radeon is maxed out (we won't know until someone offers a TWEAK program which I hear is under development from the makers of Rage 128 Tweaker...now why would someone make a tweak program if it was already running at the max clock freq???) Also (RUMOR MILL TIME)I have heard that there are some options that have disabled in the RADEONS firmware).
FACT 4 (well, personal perference)
Yes, the MX is FASTER as I've pointed out four or five times now...BUT, Moving Target and Stick for brains have never stopped over
to see the QUALITY of this card (nor witness any benchmarks). So argue that a DDR should stomp the SDR but speed is NOT everything as I'm concerened.
Yes, my RADEON is a DDR (checked the box), I thought is was a SDR because Moving Target and Stickhead SAID it was SDR...plus I was trying to hide the box from the wife.
At least I've spent the time & money to use both cards and do some type of eval and have honest marks (well as honest you can get with 3DMakrs) and in my case I say RADEON all the way baby...long live ATI, TYAN, FIC, AMD, SEAGATE, NOVELL, TEAC, TOSHIBA, & HP