DOS Days

Old PC Computing Resource

"STB delivers something old and something new this year. What's new is the Velocity 128, a high-performance board aimed at gamers and general users. A terrific all-round performer and a good value, the Velocity 128 will serve equally well in the home or in the office. The older card, the Nitro 3D, can't compete with the newest generation of accelerators on 3-D performance, but decent 2-D performance and a bargain price make it worth a look for budget-constrained users.

The Nitro 3D is an older, PCI-only model that garnered an honorable mention in last June's roundup. Since then, it has been spruced up with new drivers that extend its 3-D abilities, but the Nitro3D is not equal to newer designs on the market. This card is a good choice for those on a limited budget who need solid 2-D operations and some 3-D features for recreational use.

Easy to install and stable during operation, the Nitro 3D uses a separate application for adjusting features beyond the basic Windows menus. Like the Velocity 128, the Nitro 3D provides a zoom function, bird's-eye view, and virtual desktop. The software bundle includes four games, plus a stripped-down version of Micrografx Simply 3D.

Performance on our 2-D benchmark tests was acceptable, if unremarkable; the card should prove to be fine for typical business and home-office chores at mainstream resolutions. 3-D performance was disappointing: The Nitro 3D scored next to last on our 3D Graphics WinMark tests. Better suited for occasional 3-D users than for gamers or graphics professionals, the STB Nitro 3D is best understood as a competent graphics board for general business users on a budget.

With respectable performance, well-thought-out features, stable drivers, and reasonable prices, these two cards from STB are good buys from their respective markets.

Nitro 3D: S3 ViRGE/GX chip, 4 MB EDO DRAM, 1600 x 1200 resolution at 60 Hz refresh rate. Street price: (PCI) $100.
Velocity 128: nVidia RIVA 128 chip, 4 MB SGRAM, 1920 x 1080 resolution at 60 Hz refresh rate. Street price: (PCI and AGP) $200."
PC Magazine, December 1997

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Richardson, Texas --(April 8, 1997)-- STB Systems® (NASDAQ-STBI) will unveil today its Velocity 128 3D multimedia accelerator at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference '97 (WinHEC '97). The Velocity 128 3D offers superior graphics and video power for business applications, enhanced 3D hardware for gaming and entertainment, and STB's Multimedia Hub Architecture for combining advanced multimedia technologies.

"STB has been driving convergence technology since its infancy, and the Velocity 3D 128 has the feature-set convergence systems have needed to take them out of the study and into the living room," said Gary Kellar, STB's video product manager. "Its combination of professional quality video, exceptional 2D performance and arcade-quality 3D rendering will make the Velocity 128 3D perfect for PCI and AGP based multimedia systems designed to be the entertainment center of the home."

STB's new VELOCITY 128 3D delivers true 128-bit multimedia acceleration with full-speed polygon setup and pixel rendering for both PCI and Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) based systems. This powerful new accelerator combines high-level 3D performance with exceptional 2D graphics and video quality and features. Available with 4MB of high-speed SGRAM video memory, the VELOCITY 128 3D incorporates a 203Mhz RAMDAC supporting flicker-free refresh rates up to 160Hz.

STB's Multimedia Hub Architecture

The Velocity 128 3D will be the first multimedia accelerator to feature STB's Multimedia Hub Architecture, which is designed to support the influx of new multimedia intensive applications such as video conferencing, Digital Versatile Disk, digital satellite signal display technologies and convergence technologies. STB's new Multimedia Hub Architecture„ for PCI or AGP bus features a composite or S-Video port for video-conferencing or camera input, S-Video output port for high-quality displays on editing or entertainment displays, composite video output for display on NTSC or PAL monitors, and a comprehensive suite of multimedia controls.

"STB's Multimedia Hub Architecture is the heart of the advanced multimedia system for 1997. Convergence technologies require an interface to combine live video signals with 2D/3D acceleration technologies, and the computer system's multimedia accelerator is ideal for this purpose," said J. Shane Long vice president of sales and marketing at STB Systems. "STB's Multimedia Hub Architecture will provide the hardware connections to combine these technologies and the software controls to make them work together for a stunning mix of video, graphics and sound."

Uncompromising 2D/3D Acceleration

The VELOCITY 128 3D provides impressive cross-platform performance with optimized driver support for Windows 95, Windows NT 4.x, Windows 9x and NT 5.0 "Cairo". Powered by the all new RIVA (Real-time Interactive Video & Animation) 128  graphics engine from NVIDIA, the VELOCITY 128 3D provides high-performance graphics, full-speed MPEG 2 playback, optimized Direct-X gaming and entertainment, the bandwidth needed to explore emerging Internet virtual worlds, and high-end API support for CAD and visualization applications using OpenGL or Heidi interfaces. The VELOCITY 128 3D's RIVA 128 graphics engine incorporates a 5 GFLOPS floating-point setup engine to off-load 3D processing from the host CPU for significantly higher frame rates and on-screen scene realism.

Advanced Multimedia Features

The Velocity 128 3D satisfies the growing demand for a high performance multimedia accelerator with advanced video processing technologies being driving by the emergence of DVD, Intercast, video conferencing and other multimedia applications. It features scatter-gather DMA, color format conversion, scaling and filtering, and TV flicker-filtering to enhance digital video playback.

Samples of the Velocity 128 3D will be available in May and is expected to begin shipping in June."
STB Systems Press Office, 8th April 1997