Oxygen VX1-16 widens accessibility of 3Dlabs workstation quality, performance and functionality to corporate end-users and cost-sensitive systems integrators

Sunnyvale, CA -- (March 7, 2000) -- 3Dlabs, Inc. announced the Oxygen VX1-16, a high-value, entry-level workstation graphics accelerator that broadens accessibility to 3Dlabs' award-winning industrial-strength graphics quality, performance and functionality. Available at an MSRP of $149, the Oxygen VX1-16 enables budget-conscious design professionals and cost-sensitive systems integrators to specify and integrate a genuine, latest generation Oxygen graphics board at an unprecedented low price.

Oxygen VX1-16 boosts the productivity of graphics and design professionals by using 3Dlabs' GLINT® R3 workstation graphics processor which incorporates advanced technology such as Virtual Texturing that shatters the limitations of on-board memory when manipulating large amounts of complex textures. Virtual Texturing is particularly valuable on entry-level boards such as the Oxygen VX1-16, as it enables an accelerator board with 16MB of on-board memory to seamlessly manipulate up to 256MB of textures. Oxygen VX1-16 also delivers fully accelerated OpenGL 1.2 functionality including Volumetric Texturing and 3Dlabs' unique multi-threaded PowerThreads OpenGL drivers that take advantage of multiple CPUs to boost 3D performance.

"Autodesk® design customers require productivity; and productivity demands high-performance graphics," said Andrew J. Stein, Director of Marketing, Design Platforms Group Design Solutions Division, Autodesk, Inc. "The new Oxygen VX1-16 delivers that performance and demonstrates 3Dlabs' relentless pursuit to satisfy the design customer with high performance graphics solutions at affordable prices."

"The outstanding price/performance of the Oxygen VX1-16 allows U-Tron to expand our workstation product lines to appeal to professional graphics designers and SOHO users at a price that they can afford," said Steve Chen, President of U-Tron. "We have had great success with the mid-range Oxygen GVX1 and the 32MB version of the Oxygen VX1, and we are delighted to now offer our customers an even wider range of professional workstation options."

"The Oxygen VX1-16 is another example of 3Dlabs bringing top-of-the-line graphics acceleration to business users at an extremely competitive price point," says Peter Chen, President, Exxact, Inc. "With 3Dlab's newest graphics accelerator, we are able to offer enhanced graphics and multimedia performance to a wider audience at an unprecedented entry level price point."

"3Dlabs is single-mindedly broadening its product range to deliver the right solutions for anyone using or delivering professional graphics," said Neil Trevett, vice president of marketing at 3Dlabs. "The Oxygen VX1-16 is a potent combination of our latest generation technology delivered at an aggressive price point which offers a compelling entry-level workstation graphics solution for customers looking for true professional-grade quality and performance."

Benchmark Information

The Oxygen VX1-16 delivers category-leading performance and unparalleled image quality that far exceeds the competition. For example, when running on a 700 MHz Pentium III dual-processor machine, the Oxygen VX1-16 delivers a Viewperf 6.1.1 Awadvs score of 34.95, compared to 12.37 for the 16MB version of the Matrox G400 and 19.97 for the 16MB version of the ELSA Synergy II (1024x768 at true color screen resolutions).

About Oxygen VX1-16

Oxygen VX1-16 uses the Virtual Texture Memory address unit built into the GLINT R3 processor to transparently use main system memory as a large virtual texture store -- allowing up to 256MB of system memory to seamlessly hold textures for graphics processing. Oxygen VX1-16 uses the 16MB of physical on-board memory to store the framebuffer and Z buffer - and then allocates the remainder as a large, hardware maintained L2 virtual texture cache. This unique scheme transparently provides the advantages of unified texture memory to end-users and application developers by providing highly effective cached on-board access to textures for optimal performance.

Oxygen VX1-16's highly optimized graphics pipeline accepts and processes up to 11 million polygons per second. Oxygen VX1-16 is capable of driving high-resolution 32-bit true color displays of up to 1280x1024 with a 32-bit Z-buffer. Additionally, Oxygen VX1-16 is 100% OpenGL 1.2 compliant and supports native acceleration for Microsoft® Direct3D® running on Windows® NT 4.0, Windows 98 and Windows 2000.

About 3Dlabs

Founded in 1994, 3Dlabs is a leading supplier of integrated hardware and software graphics accelerator solutions for workstations and design professionals. 3Dlabs develops silicon, boards and software drivers to create products that effectively meet the performance and quality needs of users who rely on graphics for their productivity. 3Dlabs sells its award-winning Oxygen(tm) and Permedia® products to leading PC OEMs including Compaq, Dell, Everex, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, IBM, MaxVision and NEC through an international distributor and reseller network and directly to end-users at 3Dlabs' online store. For more information visit www.3dlabs.com.