Flagship Product Sets Industry Record for Highest Score on SPECviewperf 7.1.1 UGS-03 Benchmark

For further information, contact:

Derek Perez
NVIDIA Corporation
(408) 486-2512
dperez@nvidia.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

SIGGRAPH―LOS ANGELES, CA—AUGUST 9, 2004—NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) today introduced the fastest performing graphics solution in the industry with the new NVIDIA Quadro® FX 4400 model.  The FX 4400 model is part of a distinctive new family of professional graphics products NVIDIA announced today and based on the PCI Express™ bus architecture.  With NVIDIA® SLI™ technology to link two NVIDIA Quadro FX 4400 boards together, the solution delivered blistering speed for an industry-record setting score of 103 on the SPECviewperf® 7.1.1 UGS-03 benchmark.¹  

The four new products announced today complete NVIDIA’s broad PCI Express-based professional graphics portfolio with each new model offering a unique value proposition to users. These new products include:

NVIDIA Quadro FX 4400 ― is the undisputed performance leader of NVIDIA’s professional graphics line.  The solution features 512MB of G-DDR3 frame buffer memory, a 256-bit memory interface, 35.2GB/sec of memory bandwidth, 3-pin stereo support, and dual DVI display connectors.

NVIDIA Quadro FX 4400G ― delivers genlock and framelock capabilities on top of the powerful FX 4400 architecture and advanced feature set.  Framelock allows professionals to link multiple systems in a cluster to scale power to problem size for life-sized visualization. Genlock allows users to sync with standard signal formats and house-sync signals for video post-production, broadcast, compositing, and editing.

NVIDIA Quadro FX 1400 ― assumes the consistently popular price-performance position in the family.  Even with its accessible price, the FX 1400 offers an advanced feature set and outperforms some competitor’s high-end professional graphics products.

NVIDIA Quadro FX 540  ― has an attractive price and high definition component output support, making it a great solution for video previewing and recording.  Not limited to just video applications, the FX 540 is a solid choice for any professional 3D graphics application, including medical imaging, simulations, and mission rehearsals.

“The NVIDIA Quadro FX 4400 board is the MVP in a new family of distinct PCI Express workstation graphics solutions,” said Jeff Brown, general manager professional graphics at NVIDIA.  “This new family delivers everything users could hope for ― record-setting performance; cutting-edge features such as Shader Model 3.0 and fp32 support; high quality; and even investment protection with upgrade options for genlock, framelock, and dual-GPU mode.  It’s an all-star line-up all around.”

The NVIDIA Quadro FX 4400, FX 4400G, and FX 1400 models support NVIDIA SLI technology―an innovative new technology that enables two NVIDIA Quadro FX graphics boards to operate in a single workstation. NVIDIA SLI is based on an intelligent communication protocol embedded in the GPU and a high-speed digital interface on the graphics board to facilitate data flow.  An extensive suite of software provides dynamic load balancing, and advanced rendering and compositing to ensure smooth frame rates and outstanding image quality.  With NVIDIA SLI, users will be able to upgrade their systems to a dual-board setup on their own timetable for a noticeable increase in graphics horsepower.

“With its unique combination of advanced 2D/3D graphics capabilities, PCI Express interface, and framelock-genlock, the new NVIDIA Quadro FX 4400G product represents the next generation in high-end PC graphics,” said Marc Petit, vice president of product development at Discreet, a division of Autodesk, Inc.  “NVIDIA Quadro FX 4400G features, from integrated genlock capabilities to increased frame buffer memory and faster pixel read-back performance, will be of significant benefit to our customers in film visual effects, video broadcast, and game development markets.”

The new NVIDIA Quadro FX models round out an extensive family of PCI, AGP, and PCI Express-based professional 2D and 3D graphics solutions.  In addition to a wide range of choices and dual –GPU options, the newest members of the NVIDIA Quadro FX family feature:

-Increased application performance over their AGP-based predecessors;
-Advanced vertex and pixel programmability to allow for the creation of real-time shaders that can simulate a range of physical effects and surface properties;
-True 128-bit floating-point precision, which enables mathematical computations that maintain higher accuracy, resulting in unmatched visual quality;
-High-precision dynamic-range technology for extended 32-bit floating-point capabilities in shading, filtering, texturing, and blending operations;
-Fast pixel read-back performance for faster graphics-to-system throughput; and
-Complete compliance with NVIDIA Unified Driver Architecture, a set of backward-and-forward, top-to-bottom compatible graphics drivers that optimize application performance, stability, and reliability. 

About NVIDIA
NVIDIA Corporation is a market leader in visual computing technology dedicated to creating products that enhance the interactive experience on consumer and professional computing platforms.  Its graphics and communications processors have broad market reach and are incorporated into a wide variety of computing platforms, including consumer digital-media PCs, enterprise PCs, professional workstations, digital content creation systems, notebook PCs, military navigation systems, and video game consoles.  NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, California and employs more than 2,000 people worldwide.  For more information, visit the Company’s Web site at www.nvidia.com.

Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to, statements as to the benefits, capabilities, performance and features of the Quadro FX family of products, outperforming certain of our competitors and the ability of users to upgrade their systems 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, customers choosing our competitors’ products, manufacturing and other delays relating to our current and new products, delays in ramping new products into production, difficulties in the fabrication process, NVIDIA’s reliance on third-party manufacturers, general industry trends including cyclical trends in the PC and semiconductor industries, manufacturing costs and the pricing of components, the impact of competitive products and pricing alternatives, changes in industry standards and interfaces, market acceptance of our new products, our dependence on third-party developers and publishers, the impact of litigation and other proceedings and other risks detailed and from time to time in NVIDIA’s reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission including its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended April 25, 2004 and other filings made from time to time with the SEC. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. NVIDIA disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

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¹ NVIDIA’s SPECviewperf 7.1.1 UGS-03 results for the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4400 with SLI were measured by NVIDIA performance labs.