Fremont, California-based Sigma Designs Inc has entered the multimedia market with WinStorm, which it claims is the first Windows-accelerated video board with professional 16-bit CD-quality stereo sound: it reckons that currently 5% of all personal computer users are upgrading to multimedia-capable computers, and says that number is projected to grow to 50% by 1996; WinStorm combines on one board True Color video and CD quality sound; it includes interfaces for high performance SCSI CD-ROM, standard IBM joystick, full duplex Musical Instrument Digital Interface, and internal 20-voice stereo synthesizer, and its proprietary MultiMode Control Panel; it is based on the new AVGA3/5422 VGA controller from Cirrus Logic Inc’s Acumos unit and delivers up to 24-bit, 16.8m True Color video for photo-realistic image quality on MS-DOS computers; it is claimed to be fully compatible with SoundBlaster, Pro AudioSpectrum 16, AdLib and ThunderBoard, comes with drivers for Windows 3.1 and Windows 3.0 with Multimedia Extensions 1.0, and drivers for many MS-DOS applications; with 1Mb of memory it sells for $430.
