May 12, 1999 - ELSA, a leader in computer graphics add-on and peripheral solutions, today announced that the ELSA Synergy II received Cadence Magazine's Show Stopper Award at the National Design and Engineering Show (NDES), held in Chicago March 15-18, 1999. The Synergy II is a new professional graphics accelerator that is redefining the entry-level workstation price-performance ratio by meeting the complex 2D/3D graphics requirements of mechanical designers and other graphic professionals for a fraction of the cost of comparable solutions.
"CADENCE Magazine awarded the ELSA Synergy II with an NDES Show Stopper award because it best demonstrated innovation and vision toward extending MCAD capabilities on the desktop," stated Peter Sheerin, senior editor at Cadence Magazine. "The Synergy II is the result of ELSA's uniquely innovative vision to combine the nVidia RIVA TNT2 chip, ELSA's OpenGL driver, optimization for the new Pentium III Streaming SIMD instructions and 32MBs of memory to provide better 3D CAD performance than cards costing several times as much."
ELSA Synergy II is optimized for professional engineering applications including Mechanical Desktop; Solidworks, Pro/ENGINEER, and Microstation/J Modeler. ELSA Synergy II combines ELSA's award winning OpenGL technology and certified application-specific enhancements with nVidia's TwiN-Texel (TNT2) graphics processor to deliver extremely fast 3D and 2D performance.
A high performance solution for mechanical designers, the Synergy II processes 8 million polygons per second, 250 million pixels per second bilinear, and resolutions up to 1920 x 1200 in True Color with a 32-bit Z-buffer (including 8-bit stencil) for 3D image quality. In addition, Synergy II delivers 2D performance of 299 in Winbench 99 High-End benchmark in Windows NT when tested on a Pentium III 500 MHz system. For complex 3D modeling, Synergy II delivers a ProCDRS-01 score of 9.66 (1280x1024 16bpp 75Hz).
"The Synergy II is truly redefining the price-performance ratio by delivering unbeatable entry-level workstation performance for graphics professionals at an unbelievably low price," said Uli Theissen, president of ELSA, Inc. "We are thrilled that the Synergy II is following in the footsteps of GLoria Synergy, the Synergy II's award-winning predecessor, with this prestigious recognition by Cadence Magazine as an NDES Show Stopper product."
About Synergy II
Synergy II includes ELSA's SIMDream optimization for the Intel Pentium III processor, which delivers Streaming SIMD Extensions to ELSA's unique OpenGL and Windows NT drivers for optimal use of the Pentium III architecture. Utilizing the RIVA TNT2 processing engine as its integrated hardware setup core, Synergy II leverages the Pentium III core for high-bandwidth graphics processing such as geometry, transformation and lighting acceleration. With the implementation of Intel's new Streaming SIMD Extensions instruction set, ELSA will maximize the Pentium III's potential by accelerating important parts of the geometry pipeline to deliver significant application performance improvements to customers.
With support for both AGP 2X and AGP 4X, Synergy II offers unmatched Windows NT performance. The graphics controller has a dual-pixel 32-bit color pipeline with a 24-bit Z-buffer, 8-bit stencil buffer and per-pixel precision. With double the fill rate through the TwiN-Texel technology, it delivers fill rates of 250 million pixels-per-second, and can drive 8 million triangles per second. The Synergy II provides resolutions of up to 1920 x 1200 with a 300MHz RAMDAC.
ELSA Software Advantage
Included with every ELSA professional graphics accelerator, the ELSA Software Advantage provides users with application specific performance and productivity advantage for OpenGL and 2D. Software drivers and utilities for AutoCAD and 3D Studio MAX/VIZ. ELSA OpenGL technology achieves a ProCDRS score surpassing nine. ELSA POWERdraft is the only driver delivering hardware acceleration for both AutoCAD R13 and R14. ELSA MAXtreme is for 3D graphics performance with a customized driver combining OpenGL, HEIDI, and ELSA technology. ELSAview 3D is a real-time 3D editor and viewer tightly integrated with AutoCAD R14, AutoCAD R13, MDT and ADT.
Through the ELSA Software Advantage, customers take advantage of a wide array of unique, high-performance drivers and utilities to enable Synergy and GLoria accelerator boards to achieve maximum 2D/3D graphics performance. ELSA leverages experience in CAD and high-end graphics to create high-quality drivers to accelerate professional applications such as AutoCAD or 3D Studio MAX.
CADENCE Show Stopper Award
CADENCE awarded 10 Show Stopper awards at this year's National Design and Engineering Show (NDES). Five awards went to software products and five to hardware products.