Ticket To Ride IV continues the company's commitment to the development of powerful graphics technology for Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT and Macintosh personal computers -- designed for the most demanding corporate, 3D and multimedia graphics users -- including support for HDTV resolutions up to 1920x1080. Newly implemented features include; an Intelligent Resource Processor (IRP), a Programmable Latency Memory Controller (PLMC), and an integrated 250MHz RAM DAC.

"Ticket To Ride IV is one of the most powerful, fully integrated, graphics controllers on the market," said Andy Najda, chief executive officer and founder of Number Nine Visual Technology. "This processor allows Number Nine and OEM vendors to design world-class, high-performance 3D/Video and 2D graphics accelerator boards at very competitive price points. Graphics boards designed with Ticket To Ride IV should please the most demanding corporate, 3D and multimedia graphics users in any market or industry."

Dr. Jon Peddie, President of the market research firm Jon Peddie Associates of Tiburon, California said, "The market for 3D controllers is in an explosive stage and we’re forecasting over 70 million units will be shipped this year. Number Nine was the first to bring out a 128-bit controller with the Imagine™ 128 in 1994. This is their fourth generation 128-bit part and their experience shows. The new Programmable Latency Memory Controller, and 10-level of detail mip-mapping with tri-linear filtering is world-class technology."

Using a graphics accelerator powered by the Ticket To Ride IV, business professionals will be able to view massive spreadsheets on high performance monitors. Engineers will be able to manipulate complex 3D models in real time. Desktop artists will gain the horsepower needed to smoothly scroll large, true-color images as they work, without waiting for screens to refresh.

Outside of business hours, Ticket To Ride IV sports the video processing power needed to watch high-detail, full-motion MPEG-II video. It also delivers high-end 3D gaming capabilities supporting higher resolutions and frame rates than most existing 3D gaming cards.

Utilizing Number Nine’s proprietary 128-bit WideBus™ technology, graphics data is channeled by the newly implemented Intelligent Resource Processor (IRP) through multiple 128-bit wide data highways into two separate, yet integrated and tightly coupled 128-bit graphics engines – one for 2D, one for 3D/Video. Utilizing a 128-bit wide, 250 MHz. integrated DAC (digital to analog converter), Ticket To Ride IV enables lower cost, yet powerful graphics solutions to be built that support today’s highest performance monitors at resolutions up to 1920 x 1200 – at very high refresh rates.

Ticket To Ride IV is ideal for today’s fastest Pentium ® II CPUs. Ticket To Ride IV frees the host CPU of graphics processing tasks, allowing it to concentrate on recalculating spreadsheets and spell-checking documents. This approach speeds system performance. With full AGP 2X support, graphic instructions are transferred from the host, via the AGP bus, at speeds up to 533 megabytes a second. Once onboard, large amounts of 3D texture data can be stored locally in up to 32 MB of onboard graphics memory, efficiently processed at speeds in excess of two gigabytes a second.

Ticket To Ride IV is one of the only graphic chips on the market today to support a Programmable Latency Memory Controller (PLMC). Using the PLMC, graphics accelerators can be designed to transfer data up to 25 percent faster using standard SGRAM graphics memory. This approach differs from graphics processors designed with fixed memory latency (the initial time required to set up the memory to receive data). The PLMC reduces the time required to setup the memory for each and every data transfer.

New - Powerful 128-bit integrated DAC supports 1920x1200

Ticket To Ride IV supports resolutions up to 1920 x 1200 (HDTV) at 65K colors at refresh rates up to 83 Hz. or 16.8 million colors (32-bits / pixel) at resolutions to 1600 x 1200 at up to 92 Hz.- using as little as 8MB of low-cost SGRAM. The graphics chip processes eight 16-bit pixels per instruction cycle, then streams the digital data along multiple 128-bit wide data highways to a pair of color lookup tables. These color lookup tables process data in parallel, converting it into analog data with the integrated Palette DAC (digital to analog converter), running at a blazing 250 MHz. True hardware zooming is also supported, allowing users to instantly zoom in and out within any application -- on demand. With the chip’s 128-bit processors, wide data paths, advanced memory controller and high-speed integrated DAC, low cost, single ported graphics memory can be used to support today’s most demanding monitors.

Ticket To Ride IV, like its predecessor Ticket to Ride, supports Microsoft’s proposed 4-D/GDI-2K graphics interface standard, previewed at the recent Microsoft-sponsored Windows Hardware Developers Conference (WinHec). These standards, when implemented, improve the user interface for 2D and 3D applications, making it easier for users to work with and navigate around the computer. For example, 3D images may be manipulated as whole objects in non-rectangular or borderless windows. Pop-up and pull-down menus fade in and out, while application windows become translucent, allowing users to peer through foreground application windows on demand. Simply, 2D applications benefit from 3D hardware features that were once reserved for high-end engineering applications and advanced 3D games.

World’s first 256-bit memory interface and flexible memory configurations

Most popular graphics processors can support a maximum of only 4 or 8MB of graphics memory. This is not adequate for today’s 3D applications, which require higher resolutions than those available with game-oriented accelerators. 3D applications must also store 3D textures in onboard memory for fast, efficient 3D processing. Additionally, most competing processors offer a maximum 64-bit memory to DAC interface, which limits available supported resolutions and color depths. Number Nine’s Ticket To Ride IV processor is the only mass-market graphics chip to support up to 32MB of high-bandwidth, low-latency SGRAM, with an exclusive 128-bit memory interface to the DAC. Ticket to Ride IV also supports a 256-bit memory interface when using dual ported, interleaved WRAM graphics memory and a 128-bit wide, high-speed external Palette DAC for specialized applications.

Availability

Number Nine Visual Technology Corporation, http://www.nine.com, is a leading supplier of high-performance visual technology solutions, including video/graphics accelerator subsystems, chips and productivity-enhancing software. Number Nine is one of the first companies to offer its users drivers certified by Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL). The company is a pioneer in PC graphics, delivering the first 128-bit graphics accelerator, the first 256-color and 16.8 million-color cards, and three consecutive lines of 128-bit graphics chips and boards. Number Nine is a publicly-held company (NASDAQ: NINE) headquartered in Lexington, Massachusetts, with research and development, sales and/or marketing offices in Munich, Germany and Redmond, Washington.

Editorial Contacts:

Phil Parker, Number Nine PR, 781-869-7105, pparker@nine.com.

Steve Leon, Technopolis® Communications Inc., 310-670-5606, sleon@technopolis.com

European Contact:

Michael Dietz, Number Nine, Germany : +49 89 61 4491-0, mdietz@nine.com

Investor Relations Contact: