Ruscombe, 27th June, 1996 - Creative Labs, the leading provider of multimedia products for the PC, has burst into the PC graphics market with the launch of its new Graphics Blaster family of multimedia accelerator cards. Designed for today's Pentium-based systems, the Graphics Blaster brings high performance graphics and top quality video playback to customers at an unprecedented low price.

The three Graphics Blaster models feature high-performance 64-bit accelerator technology from Cirrus Logic, the world's leading provider of graphic accelerator chips.

The top-of-the-line Graphics Blaster MA302 uses the GD5462 Laguna Media Accelerator, and is the first consumer graphics accelerator to use RAMBUS memory. The revolutionary RAMBUS architecture provides a screaming 500 Megabytes per second of bandwidth - more than 25% greater than VRAM - which allows simultaneous smooth playback of up to three video windows. The MA302 redefines multimedia accelerator expectations, exceeding VRAM performance and will retail at an estimated street price of £129 inc VAT.

The Graphics Blaster family is further supplemented by the MA201 and MA202 models, which have been designed specifically for OEMs, systems integrators and PC assemblers. The Graphics Blaster MA202, a 2MB EDO DRAM board, and the Graphics Blaster MA201, an upgradeable 1MB EDO DRAM board, both use the GD5446 Alpine Graphics Accelerator.

All Graphics Blasters provide accelerated video playback functions such as single pass horizontal and vertical interpolation and colour space conversion, enabling Graphics Blaster to deliver superior quality full-screen playback without dropping frames. Also included is CompCore's SoftPEG software MPEG (Moving Pictures Expert Group) video and audio decoding drivers for Windows 95 and Windows 3.1, allowing software-based MPEG playback of up to 30 frames per second - full- motion video.

"Creative's continued vision is to bring emerging multimedia capabilities and advanced technologies to PC customers at affordable prices," said Chris Boyce, graphics brand manager at Creative Labs. "With Graphics Blaster, customers can break the envelope for speed at an aggressively low price. No other company has been able to deliver such impressive performance at an equally amazing price - Creative, a well-trusted brand name, is taking the graphics industry by storm."

Creative's extensive software support includes drivers for Windows 95, Windows NT, Windows 3.1, and OS/2 Warp. The Windows 95 drivers also support Microsoft's DirectX and ActiveMovie APIs for compatibility with upcoming multimedia titles for use in entertainment, education, training and business applications titles. All Graphics Blaster models are 100 percent Plug and Play compatible, easy to install and use.

All three Graphics Blaster models incorporate Creative's Blaster Control Panel. The Blaster Control Panel is a fully integrated suite of utilities designed to enhance and control all aspects of the user's Windows desktop including graphics mode switching on the fly, resolution, colour depth, screen size and position, and other critical features.

About Creative ...
Creative Technology, Ltd., is the world's leading provider of multimedia hardware and solutions for personal computers, including sound, graphics, communications and video conferencing products with its SoundBlaster technology adopted as the world- wide standard sound platform for PCs.

Founded in 1983, Creative Technology's corporate headquarters are based in Singapore with international subsidiaries and affiliate offices in China, Europe, South Korea, Australia, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan and the US. The European head office is based at Ruscombe near Twyford in the UK. In January 1994, Creative opened its European operations and technical centre in Dublin, which provides telephone support for European customers in six languages. Creative Labs Europe has grown eight-fold in the past three years with subsidaries in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, UK, Benelux, Denmark and Sweden. The European operation currently employs around 450 staff.