Creative Technology rolled out its Graphics Blaster Picture Perfect consumer graphics card based on a professional 3Dlabs VP visual processing unit today. The product is addressed to digital camera users and computer gamers, not to 2D or 3D professionals.

In early January this year Creative Labs announced its intention to bring a consumer graphics cards based on the latest VPU from 3Dlabs. As you see, it took the company nearly five month to fulfill its promise and more than a year to transform a professional solution P10 from 3Dlabs into the Graphics Blaster Picture Perfect graphics card for mainstream users.

Here are hardware specifications of the product:

• 3Dlabs VP500SE visual processing unit (this is a bit redesigned version of 3Dlabs P10 VPU);
• 128-bit memory interface in contrast to 256-bit memory interface of higher-end professional graphics cards on the same VPU;
• 64MB DDR SDRAM memory;
• 370MHz RAMDAC;
• AGP 2x/4x with sideband support;
• D-Sub, DVI-A/DVI-D connectors;  
• Supports dual-head operation for displays;

It is a bit surprising that the Graphics Blaster Picture Perfect does not provide TV-Out, a feature used by quite a lot of users; looks like Creative fully positions its Graphics Blaster Picture Perfect as a solution for those, who love to edit the pictures taken with a digital camera, not for people, who watch films or play computer games on TV-screen.

Creative Labs bundles with its Graphics Blaster Picture Perfect drivers for Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, and Windows XP with support for DirectDraw , Direct3D, DirectShow and OpenGL, Microsoft DirectX 8.1 and Arcobat Reader 5.0 software. In addition, it encloses Arcsoft CD with full versions of Panorama Maker, PhotoImpression and PhotoPrinter software needed to work with digital pictures.

Creative Labs Graphics Blaster Picture Perfect will retail for $180, according to Dow Jones Business News. The company said in the statement that it will ship the products shortly.