Company
News
DIAMOND MULTIMEDIA'S VIPER LINE OF GRAPHICS ACCELERATORS RECEIVE
LEADING INDUSTRY AWARDS
The Viper V550 Receives "MVP Award" and the Viper V330 Walks Away with the
"Best Buy" Honor
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- November 24, 1998 -- Diamond Multimedia Systems,
Inc. (NASDAQ: DIMD), a leader in interactive multimedia acceleration and PC entertainment,
announced today that the Diamond Viper V550 high-performance, 2D/3D graphics accelerator
received PC Computing magazine's "MVP Award" as the top 3D hardware
gaming accelerator in the December 1998 issue. The Viper V550 graphics accelerator is
powered by NVIDIA's RIVA TNTTM graphics processor. PC Computing affirmed the Viper
V550's success by stating, "Prepare for lift-off. Diamond's Viper V550 3D graphics
accelerator lets you have it all: blazing performance and high resolutions. Its support
for the newest gaming enhancements means you get a realistic picture at a beautiful
1024-by-768 resolution."
The Viper V330 also received accolades for its outstanding graphics performance at an
impressive price. The 2D/3D graphics powerhouse was awarded Computer Shopper's
"Best Buy of 1998 Award" in the "Best Peripherals/Components
category," and represents a triumph over some of the leading companies in the
high-tech industry.
"The Computer Shopper Best Buy Awards are designed to recognize those companies
whose products offer technological excellence as well as superior value to the
customer," said Al DiGuido, executive vice president and group publisher of Computer
Shopper.
"We are very excited that our Viper line of graphics accelerators has been
recognized by leading industry magazines as the ultimate in 2D/3D solutions for
consumers," stated Scott Vouri, vice president and general manager of core graphics
at Diamond Multimedia. "The Viper series provides an award-winning, high-performance
solution for consumers and gaming enthusiasts, as well as more demanding commercial
applications."
The Viper V550
The Viper V550, available in AGP and PCI versions, features NVIDIA's RIVA TNT
processor, the first single-chip 128-bit 3D processor able to process two pixels per clock
cycle to provide true single-pass multi-texturing for exceptional 3D realism. Scaleable,
true-color resolutions of up to 1920x1200, ultra-fast fill rates up to 180 million
pixels-per-second and an enhanced dual 32-bit color 3D pipeline all contribute to the
Viper V550's spectacular performance and visual quality output.
The Diamond Viper V550 also delivers a full hardware triangle set-up engine, full
screen anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, 24-bit Z-buffer, 8-bit stencil buffer, bump
mapping, MPEG-1 playback, TV output and more. With an integrated 250MHz DAC, Diamond's new
Viper V550 graphics accelerator is fully optimized for the industry's most popular
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), including OpenGL® and Microsoft's Direct3D®.
In addition, Diamond's new accelerator is multimedia upgradeable with the company's
DTV2000 TV Tuner/video capture card. The AGP version of the Viper V550 also ships with
Zoran's SoftDVD software.
The Viper V330
Diamond Multimedia's Viper V330 mainstream graphics accelerator, powered by NVIDIA's
RIVA 128 chip, is a true 128-bit solution for accelerating 2D/3D graphics and MPEG-1
digital video playback. Featuring SGRAM memory, Diamond's Viper is capable of displaying
resolutions up to 1600x1200 for 32-bit true-color and 1920x1200 for 16-bit high color. The
250MHz RAMDAC on-board provides flicker-free refresh rates up to 200Hz. The Viper V330 is
fully optimized for Windows 95/98 and Windows NT 4.0 environments offering a complete 3D
features set with alpha-blending, anti-aliasing, Z-buffering, Gouraud shading, hardware
triangle set up and more, for smoother more defined visuals. The Viper enhances most games
and software with drivers for DirectX 5.0, including Direct 3D and OpenGL and is DVD
upgradeable.
About Diamond Multimedia
Diamond Multimedia is driving the interactive multimedia market by providing advanced
solutions for home, business and professional desktop computer users, enabling them to
create, access and experience compelling new media content from their desktops and through
the Internet. Diamond accelerates multimedia from the Internet to the user with products
that include the Stealth and Viper® series of media accelerators, the Monster series of
entertainment 3D and sound accelerators, the Fire series of professional 3D accelerators,
the Micronics series of system boards, the Supra ® series of modems, and the HomeFree
line of home networking products. Diamond's common stock is traded on the Nasdaq Stock
Market under the symbol DIMD, and its web site address is www.diamondmm.com.
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