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Tuesday March 04, 2003

3Dlabs Wildcat Vp990 Pro Breaks New Ground with Industry-Leading 512 Mb of Memory

Significantly Extends Memory Capacity Options of Award-Winning Wildcat VP Family

3Dlabs(R) Inc., Ltd., a leading innovator in professional visual processing, today announced the new Wildcat(R) VP990 Pro workstation graphics accelerator at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California, where demonstrations will be held March 6-8 in 3Dlabs' exhibit #ES234. The new Wildcat VP990 Pro combines the highly programmable Visual Processing Unit (VPU) with a full 512 MB onboard, high speed, 256-bit graphics memory on a standard AGP card. The 3Dlabs Wildcat VP990 Pro has an estimated street price of US$899 and is slated for worldwide shipment in April through leading distributors and systems integrators. 3Dlabs is a wholly owned subsidiary of Creative Technology Ltd. (Nasdaq:CREAF).

"3Dlabs, which has been a perennial leader in the ultra high-end of the professional graphics market, broadened its portfolio and thus market opportunity last year with the introduction of the Wildcat VP family of programmable graphics accelerators," said Kate Sullivan, workstation research analyst at IDC. "With the launch of the Wildcat VP990 Pro, 3Dlabs is poised to grow both market share and volume in application segments like DCC, CAD, and other visual processing segments, where the highest levels of onboard memory and performance are crucial."

Utilizing 3Dlabs' proven Visual Processing Architecture, the Wildcat VP990 Pro is packed with 512 MB of onboard memory, the largest memory configuration currently available on a workstation graphics accelerator. Yet, the board can successfully be installed in any standard AGP 4x or AGP 8x graphics slot with no unusual power or cooling requirements. The large onboard physical memory works collaboratively with the Wildcat VP's virtual memory architecture to cache immense amounts of geometry, texture and pixel data locally onboard. CAD designers with large models, DCC professionals generating texture-rich animations, and visual simulation users moving in real-time though large databases can all significantly benefit from the massive memory capacity of the Wildcat VP990 Pro.

Real Support for high-resolution displays

The large memory reserves that the Wildcat VP990 Pro offers are ideal for driving high-resolution displays. For example, high-end nine mega pixel displays easily absorb over 100 MB of graphics memory simply driving the screen, and that is before any geometry or textures are stored and processed. Enabling high-quality anti-aliasing tends to consume enormous amounts of graphics processing power and memory. As the first professional graphics accelerator available with 512 MB of onboard memory, the Wildcat VP990 Pro provides an extra boost of memory facilitating high-quality, anti-aliasing utilization on a broader spectrum of professional displays than previously obtained.

New Wildcat VP990 Pro

The new Wildcat VP990 Pro graphics accelerator is offered in a price/performance model that supports standard AGP 4x or AGP 8x-based workstations running Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP and Windows(R) 2000 operating systems:

Product: Wildcat VP990 Pro

Memory: 512 MB 256-bit DDR

Displays: Dual DV-1 connectors drive two independent heads with any combination of analog and digital displays

Performance: 225 M Vertices/sec 42 G Antialiasing Samples/sec

Capabilities: Drives large resolution displays, accelerates handling large models & scenes while accommodating high-quality anti-aliased displays

Segment: CAD, DCC,Visualization & Simulation

ESP (US Only): $899

About 3Dlabs

3Dlabs, a leading innovator in professional visual processing, supplies a broad range of graphics accelerators to Computer Aided Design (CAD), Digital Content Creation (DCC), and visual simulation professionals. Its award-winning Wildcat graphics solutions are available in industry-leading OEM workstations, in the channel through an international distributor/reseller network, and directly to end-users at 3Dlabs' online store. For more information on 3Dlabs products, visit www.3Dlabs.com. 3Dlabs is a wholly owned subsidiary of Creative Technology Ltd.