NVIDIA's New GeForce 256 Embraced By Industry's Top PC OEMs

Industry's First GPU Selected by Dell, Gateway, Compaq, Micron and NEC Direct for Desktop PC Systems

PALM SPRINGS, CA – AUGUST 31, 1999 – NVIDIA™ Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) announced that it has secured GeForce 256™ design wins with five of the top PC OEMs, including: Dell® Computer Corporation, Gateway, Compaq Computer Corporation, Micron Electronics, Inc.™ and NEC Direct. In order to meet the high-volume requirements of these customers, NVIDIA also announced it has begun full ramp of the GeForce 256 graphics processing unit (GPU) into full production. "The GeForce 256 GPU is being accepted even faster than the RIVA TNT2 was," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of NVIDIA Corporation. "We've clearly accelerated our growing lead in the 3D graphics market and, as the first company to deliver an integrated transform and lighting solution, we're securing design wins across the board."

By adding the GeForce 256 GPU to their already successful product line, the industry's top PC OEMs will be able to deliver more complex, lifelike images; rich, realistic environments; enhanced artificial intelligence; and physics than ever before possible on a desktop PC. With the ability to deliver an unprecedented 15 million triangles per second and 480 million pixels per second, PC users experience a whole new level of visual realism.

The GeForce 256 GPU takes full advantage of all of the breakthrough features of Microsoft's® new DirectX® 7.0 application programming interface (API), and provides full support for OpenGL®. The combination of GeForce 256 and feature-rich APIs delivers the best quality graphics for entertainment, education, business and e-commerce applications and guarantees a new level of performance.

The GeForce 256 GPU supports up to 128MB of frame buffer memory and AGP 4X with Fast Writes to support the storage of high-quality 3D textures and a 350MHz RAMDAC, to drive the most extreme resolutions, color depths and ergonomic refresh rates, up to 2048 x 1536 @ 75Mhz. In addition to DirectX support, the GeForce 256 GPU provides full support for an OpenGL® ICD (Installable Client Driver) for Windows® 2000 and Windows NT®.


About NVIDIA
NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), the world's leading supplier of performance 3D graphics processors, is the only independent top-to-bottom supplier of 3D graphics solutions for mainstream PCs. NVIDIA designs, markets and sells an award-winning family of 3D processors, delivering industry-leading performance and visual quality for a broad range of PC-based applications, including enterprise visualization, e-commerce, e-business, education and entertainment. Used by the top PC OEMs in the world, NVIDIA's products are distributed through a worldwide channel that includes PC OEM, add-in card and motherboard partners in Europe, Asia and North America. For more information, please visit the Company's web site at http://www.nvidia.com.

Certain statements in this press release, including the statements relating to the Company's performance expectations for NVIDIA's family of products and expectations of continued revenue growth, 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, manufacturing and other delays relating to new products, difficulties in the fabrication process and dependence of the Company on third party manufacturers, general industry trends, including cyclical trends in the PC and semiconductor industries, the impact of competitive products and pricing alternatives, market acceptance of the Company's new products and the Company's dependence on third party developers and publishers. Investors are advised to read the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly those sections entitled "Factors Affecting Operating Results," for a fuller discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties.

Notes to Editors: The recommended way of writing GeForce 256 is with an uppercase G and F, all other letters lowercase with a space between GeForce and 256. The recommended way of writing Vanta is in title case. Please note that the recommended way of writing NVIDIA, RIVA 128, RIVA 128ZX, RIVA TNT and RIVA TNT2 is all CAPITALS.

NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, RIVA TNT, RIVA TNT2, NVIDIA Vanta and GeForce 256 are trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation. RIVA, RIVA 128 and RIVA 128ZX are trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation and STMicroelectronics. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.