Emerging 3D applications that deliver new levels of realism to your PC are placing increasing demands on today's computing hardware.

Leading 3D graphics accelerators are becoming more and more advanced . . .Today's processors often can not keep pace . . .And a graphics bottleneck has developed in between . . .

Fortunately, there's 3DNow! technology.
AMD leads the way to better-than-ever 3D graphics and multimedia performance for mainstream PCs, with 3DNow!^(TM) technology -- an innovative enhancement to the x86 instruction set that breaks through 3D processing bottlenecks to enable a more productive, entertaining and realistic PC experience.

The Benefits

• Leading-edge 3D performance
• More realistic and lifelike 3D imaging and graphics
• Big screen sound and video
• Ultimate Internet experience

Why It's Important: The Problem
In recent years, 3D has come of age in the world of personal computing. According to Jon Peddie Associates (JPA), 3D is currently the fastest growing market segment in the PC industry and is expected to double in size in the next two years. While 3D gaming software has typically comprised the first wave of applications to incorporate leading edge visual effects, its development has sparked the demand for advanced multimedia technology in other PC application areas, including edutainment, business and personal productivity (word processing, spreadsheet modeling, presentation graphics), VRML and 3D on the Internet, photo image manipulation, soft DVD playback, voice recognition, and soft modems.

These exciting new 3D applications require powerful hardware support. However, today's processors are creating a bottleneck in the critical graphics pipeline. A processor that's bogged down in 3D modeling at the beginning of the graphics pipeline simply can't send the graphics accelerator at the other end enough data, fast enough. And as graphics accelerators get even better at rendering 3D images for a growing number of new 3D applications, the bottleneck at the processor will only get bigger.