To: Jeffrey Beckman who wrote (98 ) 3/1/1999 9:22:00 AM From: lindalib Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 710
/FROM PR NEWSWIRE LOS ANGELES 213-626-5500/ TO BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY EDITORS: Wicked3D Announces Revolutionary Technology for Parallel Graphics Processing FREMONT, Calif., March 1 /PRNewswire/ -- The Wicked3D(TM) Board Company, a division of Metabyte, Inc., announces today that it will change the face of the PC gaming industry with its proprietary parallel graphics processing technology. This revolutionary technology was developed, in-house, by the Metabyte engineering team and will have a tremendous impact on the 3D graphics market for 1999 and beyond. This technology will allow Metabyte to run graphics cards in a parallel configuration using any existing chip on the market. It will also have the capability to be applied to any future chipset that comes to market. Specifically, the application of this technology to an existing 2D/3D chip set will yield a 40+ percent increase in performance and will double megapixel per second fill rate of a dual card configuration over a single card. A white paper outlining the benefits of this technology in more detail can be found atwicked3d.com . Wicked3D has successfully implemented this technology on current 2D/3D AGP and PCI architectures. Presently, demand for this technology has proven overwhelming as a result of unauthorized leaks on the Internet that have lead to customers demanding to pre-order Wicked3D parallel graphics boards. The company is reviewing a number of options to bring its technology to market in the coming months because of the tremendous response of consumers and companies within the industry. The implementation of this Wicked3D driver technology requires very minor modifications to existing hardware. The process of rendering images from two sources will separate the images being rendered into sections. The driver then sends the rendered information to the appropriate board so that rendering occurs in parallel on the two boards. Such rendering is still the biggest performance bottleneck with current graphics hardware especially at high resolutions, so this approach provides a big win. Wicked3D is reviewing which chipsets would best be supported by this technology in the high-end consumer graphics market, and will be making announcements shortly regarding products that will be using the Wicked3D technology. The company is targeting an aggressive retail launch for this technology. "We have chip vendors, board vendors, the large retail chains, and even tier one OEMs knocking on our door now, and this is before we have even announced the technology." Says Dennis P. Raquet, General Manager of the Wicked3D Board Company. "The response is truly phenomenal. We are now bringing forward our plans for introducing this technology, and scaling up our ambitions accordingly." About The Wicked3D Board Company The Wicked3D Board Company is a division of Metabyte that specializes in designing and manufacturing multimedia products for the PC. Its parent company, Metabyte, Inc., is a fast-growing entertainment and information technology company that provides innovative graphics, interactive media, high- speed networking and web commerce products and services. The Wicked3D Board Company leverages Metabyte's software expertise and is rapidly becoming a launch pad for new hardware products. Contact: Metabyte, Inc., 39350 Civic Center Drive, Suite 200, Fremont, CA 94538 Phone: (510) 494-9700 Fax: (510) 494-9100 metabyte.com wicked3d.com Metabyte, Wicked3D, Wicked3D Vengeance, WickedVision, Re2Flex, and DriveThru are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Metabyte, Inc. All trade names referenced are the trademarks or registered of their respective holders. All other product names are the service marks, trademarks, or registered trademarks of their respective holders. SOURCE Metabyte, Inc. /