NVIDIA Expands Penetration Into Professional Workstation Market; Award-Winning RIVA TNT2 Now Featured In Compaq Workstations.

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 8, 1999--

NVIDIA(TM) Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) announced today that Compaq Computer Corporation, a leading international manufacturer of PC workstations, offers the award-winning RIVA TNT2(TM) graphics processor in its line of industry-leading workstation products. The RIVA TNT2, which is made available via the ELSA Synergy II professional 3D graphics solution, is available in Compaq's Professional Workstation AP 200, AP400, AP500, AP550, SP 700, and SP750 products. The Compaq Professional Workstations featuring the RIVA TNT2 offers end users robust 3D performance for such diverse operations as CAD/CAM, mechanical design and modeling, animation and land or asset management applications.

"Our continued expansion into the workstation market is a key element of our top-to-bottom strategy, " said Dan Vivoli, vice president of marketing at NVIDIA. "By leveraging our robust RIVA TNT2 architecture, these Compaq workstations deliver the horsepower required by today's workstation users while providing a price point significantly lower than competitive solutions."

"The addition of the RIVA TNT2-based graphics solutions to our professional workstations allows Compaq to offer industry-leading solutions with superior graphics capabilities at an affordable price," said Jeff Wood, manager, graphics and options of Compaq's Workstation division. "These new solutions will put all of the power normally associated with high-end workstations into the hands of any 3D professional - regardless of budget."

RIVA TNT2 Offers Industry-Leading Workstation Performance

Targeting the desktop PC market, RIVA TNT2-based boards feature: 300MHz RAMDAC, 32MB of RAM, support for resolutions beyond HDTV and as high as 2048 x 1536 x 32bpp at 60Hz. The RIVA TNT2 architecture is NVIDIA's fourth-generation integrated 128-bit 3D processor. The TwiN Texel architecture, combined with per-pixel mip-mapping precision, offers an unprecedented fill rate of up to 350 million pixels-per-second - twice as many as the nearest competitor.

The RIVA TNT2 meets all the requirements of the mainstream PC graphics market and Microsoft's PC 98, PC 99 and DirectX(R) 6.0 initiatives. In addition to DirectX support, the RIVA TNT provides full support for an OpenGL(R) ICD (Installable Client Driver) for Windows(R) 95 and Windows NT(R). Delivering the industry's fastest Direct3D(R) acceleration, leadership VGA, DirectDraw(R) and video performance allows the RIVA TNT2 to power a growing range of 3D applications, including the hottest 3D games and full-screen DVD playback. Supported applications include: AutoCAD 2000/R14, Pro/ENGINEER, I-DEAS MS, ALLPLAN FT, MicroStation, SolidWorks, CA Unicenter TNG, EDS Unigraphics, LightWave 3D, 3D Studio MAX/VIZ and WorldToolKit, and all applications based on Open Inventor.

About NVIDIA

NVIDIA Corporation, the world's leading supplier of performance 3D graphics processors, is the only independent top-to-bottom supplier of 3D graphics solutions for mainstream PCs. NVIDIA designs, markets and sells an award-winning family of 3D processors, delivering industry-leading performance and visual quality for a broad range of PC-based applications, including enterprise visualization, e-commerce, e-business, education and entertainment. Used by the top PC OEMs in the world, NVIDIA's products are distributed through a worldwide channel that includes PC OEM, add-in card and motherboard partners in Europe, Asia and North America. For more information, please visit the Company's web site at http://www.nvidia.com.

Certain statements in this press release, including the statements relating to the Company's performance expectations for NVIDIA's family of products and expectations of continued revenue growth, are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be materially different than expectations. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, manufacturing and other delays relating to new products, difficulties in the fabrication process and dependence of the Company on third party manufacturers, general industry trends, including cyclical trends in the PC and semiconductor industries, the impact of competitive products and pricing alternatives, market acceptance of the Company's new products and the Company's dependence on third party developers and publishers. Investors are advised to read the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly those sections entitled "Factors Affecting Operating Results," for a fuller discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties.

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Notes to Editors: The recommended way of writing GeForce 256 is with an uppercase G and F, all other letters lowercase, with a space between GeForce and 256. The recommended way of writing Vanta is in title case. Please note that the recommended way of writing NVIDIA, RIVA 128, RIVA 128ZX, RIVA TNT and RIVA TNT2 is all CAPITALS.

NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, RIVA TNT, RIVA TNT2, NVIDIA Vanta and GeForce 256 are trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation. RIVA, RIVA 128 and RIVA 128ZX are trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation and STMicroelectronics. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.