Michael Viramontes, Senior Product Marketing Manager
ELSA Inc.
408-919-9100 ext. 105
michaelv@elsa.com

ELSA Announces ELSA Erazor II New-Generation Multimedia Accelerator

Featuring the NVIDIA's RIVA TNT chipset, ELSA Erazor II is a high-end 2D/3D Multimedia Performer

Orlando, FL (July 21, 1998) - ELSA, Inc. a world leader of multimedia graphics products, today announced the latest addition to the ELSA award winning line up of consumer graphics accelerators, the ELSA Erazor II. Featuring the State-of- the-art RIVA TNT graphics processor from NVIDIA Corporation, the ELSA Erazor II targets the performance segment of the PC graphics market with 250 mega-pixels-per-second (MPPS) fill rate, over 8 million polygons per second, and a full 128-bit memory interface to deliver incredible 3D quality and performance.

"The introduction of the Erazor II marks a turning point in consumer graphics," remarked Uli Theissen, president of ELSA Inc. "With the expanded functionality and performance of the NVIDIA RIVA TNT, Erazor II will now be the board of choice for both gamers and professionals."

"ELSA's 15 years of experience in developing, producing and marketing PC peripheral equipment for the professional and consumer graphics markets is a testament to ELSA's strong position in the 3D graphics industry," said Jeff Fisher, vice president of sales at NVIDIA Corporation. "Today's announcement of the ELSA Erazor II, using the RIVA TNT, promises to meet the high demands of the performance graphics segment."

The powerful new RIVA TNT with it's TwiN Texel processing engine, integrates a dual-pixel 32-bit color pipeline with 24-bit Z-buffer, 8-bit stencil buffer and per-pixel precision. RIVA TNT can apply two textures to a single triangle while processing two pixels per clock cycle to yield twice the pixel fill rate. The 250MHz RAMDAC is capable of driving the most extreme resolutions, color depths and ergonomic refresh rates up to 1600 x 1200 x 32bpp @ 85Hz.

ELSA's new-generation Erazor II is expected to set new standards for 2D and 3D graphics performance and quality in the mainstream market. Featuring a 128-bit graphics pipeline to the frame buffer interface and support up to 16MB of frame buffer memory and AGP 2X high speed interconnect the result is a powerful solution for traditional 2D software and 3D intensive games and DVD titles.

ELSA Erazor II will be optimized for Microsoft's PC '98 and Direct3D^™, including the DirectX 6.0. The outstanding DirectX support of the ELSA Erazor II ensures superb multimedia quality across a wide range of graphical applications. In addition to full optimization for DirectX 5.0/6.0 and Windows 98, ELSA provides full support for an OpenGL ICD (Installable Client Driver) for Microsoft^® Windows 95^® and Microsoft^® Windows NT^®.

The ELSA Erazor II also supports dual texture engine capabilities for single-pass multi-texturing and single pass trilinear texture filtering. This allows 3D tasks like shading and dual textures to be processed through two separate graphics engines simultaneously, completing these complex tasks in only a single cycle of the processor. With previous generation controllers these tasks required the pixel to make two passes through the rendering engine. This ability makes the ELSA Erazor II up to four times faster than previous generation accelerators.

The ELSA Erazor II will be available with 8MB or 16MB of high speed synchronous memory and is targeted at the high-end Performance PC and Professional PC segments.

The ELSA Erazor II in a 16MB configuration will have a suggested retail price below $289, with a game bundle that is yet to be announced. Availability is expected in late Q3.

NVIDIA Information

NVIDIA Corporation designs, develops, markets and sells high-performance 3D processors for personal computers. NVIDIA has been recognized as one of the hottest semiconductor companies in Upside Magazine's December 1997 article titled "Mr. Hot Chips '97" and was honored as The Most Respected Private Fabless Company by the Fabless Semiconductor Association (FSA) in November 1997. NVIDIA is a privately held company with venture financing. Corporate headquarters are in California: NVIDIA Corporation, 1226 Tiros Way, Sunnyvale, CA 94086. (408) 617-4000. http://www.nvidia.com.

ELSA Information

ELSA Inc. is a subsidiary of ELSA AG, a Germany based publicly listed company, trading on the 'Neuer Markt' trading segment of the Frankfurt stock exchange. Founded in 1980, ELSA has built a world-class reputation in high-performance 2D and 3D graphics solutions for professional workstations, commercial desktop and consumer PCs. In addition ELSA offers a wide range of communications products such as Modems, ISDN-internet access solutions and PC based videoconferencing products.

The ELSA logo is a registered trademark of ELSA AG. All names mentioned may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.