Hot New Graphics Spark IBM IntelliStations

Research Triangle Park, NC -- IBM announced that the IBM IntelliStation NT-based workstations have been enhanced with eye-popping, new 2D and 3D graphics, including dual-monitor capabilities. These new graphics technologies are featured on the newest IBM IntelliStation E Pro, M Pro and Z Pro models, and give customers performing mechanical computer-aided design, digital content creation, finance or engineering analysis a significantperformance boost.

"The IBM IntelliStation is known for its powerful graphics and in just two years we've quadrupled its performance," said Satish Gupta, vice president, IBM IntelliStation. "With these new graphics technologies, we'll be able to enhance a customer's applications even more, giving IBM IntelliStation the unique ability to offer industry-leading performance, but fine-tuned to meet whatever application the customer is running."

For advanced 2D performance, IBM IntelliStations will feature the new Matrox Millennium G400, a 256-bit graphics engine with accelerated graphics (AGP) support. The low-cost G400 has 16 MB SGRAM , multi-monitor support (up to four) with additional PCI Matrox cards, and 304MHZ RAMDAC. The G400 has video input/output and second analog/digital monitor output upgrades available.

IBM's Fire GL1 graphics solution, first introduced by IBM in March, allows IntelliStation customers to achieve outstanding 3D and 2D graphics results but at a much reduced cost. The IBM Fire GL1 is able to achieve these results because its performance scales with multiple processors and processor speed. It features optimized drivers for new Pentium III floating point instructions and memory streaming. The IBM Fire GL1 is a low-cost OpenGL, 3D solution, with 256-bit acceleration engine; 256 bit, 100MHz interleaved memory bus, AGP V2.0 support and a full Open GL 3D engine with Installable Client Driver (ICD) for NT. Some applications include solutions by: Adobe, Avid, Kinetix and Newtek.

Appian Jeronimo Pro 16: Dual Monitor

In addition to the new graphics technologies introduced today, IBM also announced new models featuring the Appian Jeronimo Pro 16, a dual 64-bit Permedia 2 graphics engine which allows two monitors to be run at the same time. Pro 16 is a low-cost, high performance 2D and 3D graphics solution with a two-port configuration that gives dual monitor capability with support for up to eight monitors. It has 16 MB SGRAM (eight MB per channel) and two 230MHz RAMDAC's.

Some applications include solutions by: Reuters, Bloomberg, Dow Jones, Cadence, Mentor, Bentley and Media 100

IBM IntelliStation

IBM IntelliStation E Pro, M Pro and Z Pros, feature Intel's Pentium III and Pentium III Xeon microprocessors at speeds of up to 550MHz and utilize Intel's 440BX chipset. IBM IntelliStations can be configured with a choice of 7200 or 10,000 rpm disk drives ranging in capacity from 6.8 to 18.2 GB. All IntelliStation models feature IBM Universal Management tools, which help customers focus on running their business, rather than running their networks.

IBM Wake on LAN, Asset ID, Alert on LAN, Smart Reaction and LanClient Control Manager are manageabity technologies designed to help customers deploy and keep track of their inventories, monitor system outages and/or tampering, perform automatic data backup before a hardware failure occurs and remotely manage their systems.

IBM IntelliStation features the latest processor technology, the latest graphics technology and the latest management technology which together are critical for the typical application-driven workstation customer. IBM IntelliStation is being used for such diverse activities as computer-aided design, game development, solid modeling, 3D animation, engineering analysis, web authoring, design simulation and video editing.  The graphics enhancements announced today will help give IBM IntelliStation customers the best tools possible.

Pricing and Availability

All of the graphics technologies announced for IBM IntelliStation today are available now. Estimated reseller prices for IBM IntelliStation are as follows (resellers set their own prices, so prices may vary):

IBM IntelliStation E Pro      -- $1829

IBM IntelliStation M Pro      -- $2799

IBM IntelliStation Z Pro      -- $4039

For more information visit the IBM IntelliStation web site at

http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/intellistation