Monday, January 1 12:01 AM EST

NVIDIA Rips a New One

Santa Clara, CA - NVIDIA Corporation announced today the details of a new line of graphics processors that have been designed at the company's FAB5 research and development center.  Both consumer and professional versions of the processors will be released simultaneously into the marketplace.

The professional version will be called the Voodoo GeForce3 Ultra GTS/MX Banshee 3000 Quadro.  It will include all the features of the consumer version, along with a list of undetermined features.  "Believe me, the Quadro will rip everyone a new one," chuckled Douglas.  "This chip is our flagship, and our developers have spent months hiding registry keys to keep hackers from enabling Quadro-like features on the consumer version.  The Quadro is the epitome of a graphics processor.  If Jesus descended and purchased a graphics solution for his workstation, it would be a Quadro."

The consumer version of the processor will be called the Voodoo GeForce3 Ultra GTS/MX Banshee 2000.  The card will feature built-in HDTV decoder, support of up to 2GB DDR RAM, integrated RAMDAC, four-way multi-texturing, 32-bit color, and enhanced T&L engine.

Chief project developer Scott McMasters said, "The frame rates achievable with these products are unbelievable.  We determined that at 640x480 and 16-bit color, a Quake III timedemo will give 98% of the populous epileptic seizures.  For the other 2% that crave faster frame rates, more power, and epileptic seizures, a second Voodoo GeForce3 Ultra GTS/MX Banshee 2000 may be added to the system creating the Voodoo GeForce3 Ultra GTS/MX Banshee 2000 SLI.  A 500 watt power supply may be required for SLI operation."

Along with revised T&L engine, the new line of processors has other enhancements as well.  "One addition we are really excited about is our Translation and Arithmetic engine," continued McMasters.  "This is a breakthrough for matrix mathematics that makes the 3D world possible.  Once an application developer gets their hands on T&A, they don't want to go back to what they were using.  T&A is easy for the developer to dive into because of its warm and friendly interface.  We prided ourselves on creating an environment where every potential developer can easily get to work using a piece of T&A."

"The Quadro has a leg up on its less powerful sibling in the T&A area," explained McMasters.  "The Quadro features three-way T&A. Finally, the dream of a three-way T&A sitting on your desktop is now available to the masses.   NVIDIA will also look for the possibility of three-way T&A for laptops as well sometime in the future."

Both versions will be available Q1 of 2001.

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