NeTpower's New SilverpoiNT Graphics Subsystem Delivers Industry's Best 3D Graphics Performance for Windows NT.

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 30, 1998--

-- Composite Viewperf Score Unmatched by Any Windows NT Systems

Vendor

-- Price/Performance Unmatched by Any Vendor on Any Platform

-- The Largest Feature Set of Any Workstation Graphics Subsystem

from Any Vendor

NeTpower, the originator of Windows NT system solutions, today ushered in a new era in high-level workstation computing with the announcement of its SilverpoiNT 5000 graphics technology for use in NeTpower's award-winning workstations.

With balanced 3D and 2D graphics performance, SilverpoiNT 5000 is the company's first in a new line of products that offer the best graphics performance for all Windows NT applications, and allows design engineers and creative professionals to deploy top-of-the-line 3D workstations on their desktops at an affordable price.

SilverpoiNT 5000 has a Viewperf composite benchmark result above 14.0, the best of any Windows NT graphics subsystem available today, increasing NeTpower's graphics performance up to 250 percent. This translates into excellent rendering and shading on large models typically found in complex 3D designs and animations.

A SYMETRA3 workstation equipped with the SilverpoiNT 5000 AGP-enabled graphics subsystem, a single 333MHz Pentium II processor, 64MB of RAM and a 2GB system disk starts at $6,650 and can be ordered immediately from NeTpower and its resellers for delivery in late April. The graphics technology is also available to current NeTpower customers to upgrade existing SYMETRA3 systems.

"We were the first to deliver Windows NT workstations in 1993 and now with our SilverpoiNT graphics technology, NeTpower is the first to deliver Windows NT 3D graphics performance once thought the domain of high-priced, proprietary UNIX solutions. SilverpoiNT reflects our continued dedication to deliver cost-effective, high-powered solutions," said NeTpower founder and CEO Bob Miller. "NeTpower has long served the computing needs of visually intensive applications at the high end of the workstation market such as digital content creation for movie special effects and large-scale industrial design for car manufacturing."

SILVERPOINT DELIVERS UNPARALLELED SPEED IN 3D GRAPHICS APPLICATIONS

The breakthrough performance of SilverpoiNT 5000 is achieved by offloading the lighting and transformation calculations from the CPU to dedicated custom logic. A single slot AGP graphics board based on the award-winning 3Dlabs GLINT GMX 2000 technology, SilverpoiNT 5000 includes a GLINT Gamma geometry and lighting processor and dual GLINT MX lighting, shading and texturing engines. SilverpoiNT 5000 delivers a blazing 3.3 million polygons per second, texture mapping of over 66 million bilinear mip-mapped Z-buffered pixels (texels) per second, all at resolutions up to HDTV format (1900 x 1080, true color, 3D double-buffered)

"NeTpower is truly excited about the work we've done to enhance the 3Dlabs GMX 2000 chipset with the addition of our AGiLE custom logic and other board level features. We have invested significant development effort to make SilverpoiNT 5000 the premier graphics technology to hit the market for the coming year," said Chris Hall, manager, graphics technology at NeTpower. "SilverpoiNT solidifies our position as the only true solutions-focused Windows NT systems provider to deliver high-performance graphics, at a price-point the competition can't match."

SILVERPOINT BUILDS ON LONG-STANDING WINDOWS NT GRAPHICS COMPUTING TRADITION

The SilverpoiNT 5000 contains a combination of innovative features that are found in no other workstation graphic subsystem. The card has 120 bits of memory per-pixel, including double-buffered 24-bit color data providing vivid images and double-buffered 8-bit overlay. SilverpoiNT 5000 includes a 32-bit Z-buffer for ultra-precise 3D rendering, 8-bit window IDs to support 255 simultaneous double-buffered windows, 4-bit GIDs to maintain performance when 2D windows overlay 3D windows, 8-bit stencil planes for special effects, and 4 FCP bits for fast Z-buffer clearing.

NeTpower's AGiLE chip provides hardware per-window double-buffering, which is not found in other GLINT implementations. This features NeTpower's TearFree(TM) technology which ensures flicker-free rotations and animations, while minimizing double-buffering overhead, thus maximizing rendering performance in real applications. The AGiLE chip also provides comprehensive Stereoscopic viewing support, providing both quad-buffered "stereo-in-a-window," and legacy above-and-below stereo. Hardware occlusion culling support enables applications such as SDRC I-DEAS Master Series 6 to intelligently determine which parts of complex objects are visible on the screen, making for highly reactive interaction of very complex 3D assemblies.

NeTpower's custom hardware vertical bit-blit engine insures smooth 2D vertical scrolling up to three times faster than the standard GLINT GMX 2000 chipset. The SilverpoiNT 5000 uses a 128-bit, 250 MHz RAMDAC with 10-bit DACs for superior color correction and optional support of sophisticated color management systems. The product includes version 2.0 of NeTpower's SMARTinstall utility for effortless configuration of the graphics subsystem for maximum performance based on the primary application. The product also includes 16MB of texture memory supporting up to 16Mtexel of texture storage, with 8-bit palletized textures, and it has 100 percent hardware texture mapping support, including per-pixel mip-mapping, trilinear and bilinear filtering, all with per-pixel perspective correction. It supports the entire OpenGL 1.1 feature set with full geometry acceleration, including Gourand shading, fog, alpha blending, specular lighting and antialiasing.

NeTpower's philosophy is to benchmark based on real life tasks and data sets, and the company does not optimize its products for specific abstract benchmarks. NeTpower endorses the Viewperf Composite benchmark because it representsng tasks. SilverpoiNT 5000 is the top performesignificantly to the specification of the GLINT GMX. It is particularly pleasing therefore to see NeTpowerlabs. "SilverpoiNT dramatically demonstrates

ABOUT NETPOWER - THE ORIGINATOR OF s. The privately held company was established Its award-winning, true workstations and servers offer an industry-leading array of integrated visual computing solutions for the digital media, 3D design, information management and Internet/intranet markets. The company is also well-respected for an unparalleled level of customer service and support and bases all product development efforts on real-world customer requirements. NeTpower hardware is used in many applications which comprise the digital frontier including product design at Navistar; delivering live videostreaming content to Warner Bros. Online viewers; and managing trading floor activities and providing mission-critical, fault-tolerant support at the Chicago Stock Exchange.

NeTpower is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., with offices worldwide. Additional information on NeTpower can be obtained at http://www.netpower.

NeTpower and the NeTpower logo are registered trademarks. Inte Pentium are registered trademark s of Intel Corp All other trademarks used herein are the prop CONTACT: McGrath/Power Public Relations

Carolyn Rohrer or Roger Fortier, 408/727-0351

carolyn_rohrer@ mcgrathpowerpr.com

roger_fortier@ mcgrathpowerpr.com

KEYWORD: CALIFORNIA

INDUSTRY KEYWORD: COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS COMED

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