Creative Labs Rendition Video Card Coming Soon

Creative Labs, best known (to me at least) for their sound cards, are releasing a video card in a couple of weeks based on the V1000 Rendition Chip. This will feature 4MB of EDO DRAM and support Microsoft’s Direct3D, Intel’s 3DR, Reality Lab 4.0, Rendition’s Speedy 3D, Renderware, Brender, and Creative’s own Creative Graphics Library (CGL).

Check out the full article from GameCenter below:

Creative Labs has expanded its position in the young but highly competitive 3D graphics board market with the introduction of the 3D Blaster PCI graphics accelerator.

In addition to supporting the first wave of new 3D-accelerated games being released this holiday season, the 3D Blaster PCI comes with special accelerated versions of id Software’s Quake (the sharewhare levels), Looking Glass Technologies’ Flight Unlimited, and Playmate Interactive’s Battle Arena Toshinden.

The card, which is based on Rendition’s Vérité graphics processor, will be in stores in mid-October for an estimated street price of $199. Like Integraph’s Reactor card and other 3D accelerators based on the Vérité processor, the 3D Blaster PCI has 4MB of EDO DRAM for display memory, on-board texture cache, and Z-buffering. It also provides support for 2D graphics applications.

Due to the delayed release of Microsoft’s Direct3D API, many game developers have decided to use an alternative API to build their games. This has left many card manufacturers with no other choice but to support a wide variety of APIs with their first accelerators. The 3D Blaster PCI is yet another example of such a card, offering support for programs written with Microsoft’s Direct3D, Intel’s 3DR, Reality Lab 4.0, Rendition’s Speedy 3D, Renderware, Brender, and Creative’s own Creative Graphics Library (CGL).

The 3D Blaster PCI is one the first products Creative Labs has released since the company announced that it will no longer manufacture CD-ROM drives. Creative Labs will continue to sell multimedia upgrade kits with Samsung CD-ROM drives. Whether the company will distribute upgrade kits with sound cards, CD-ROM drives, and graphics accelerators has not yet been determined.

Finally, another new Creative Labs announcement should be music to your ears if you own a Sound Blaster 16. Thanks to a partnership between Creative Labs and Seer Systems, Creative is offering its new software synthesizer, Creative WaveSynth, to OEMs. This software solution will offer 32-bit wavetable audio capabilities to Sound Blaster 16 cards