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Technology Stocks : S3 (A LONGER TERM PERSPECTIVE)
SIII 0.00010000.0%May 12 5:00 PM EST
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To: Jan A. Van Hummel who wrote (10729)5/1/1998 12:42:00 PM
From: Bill Lin  Read Replies (2) of 14577
 
Hey Jan,
I've been watching STBI fall like S3 and it seems that ATI's low end stuff is killing them. Either Nvidia will lower its chip price, or S3 has to come out with SDRAM based Trio chips.

I looks like the market is divided into 5 segments now:
$29-49 PCI boards for Socket 7 Motherboards
$59-99 AGP boards for Celeron/P2 boards (Trid/S3/ATI)
$118-$169 AGP boards for P2 (nvidia/ATI)
$159-$259 PCI 3D add on boards (3dfx)
$1k-$3k professional boards (3dlabs)

Of course Matrox and other usual suspects will play in their niches.

But the move from expensive WRAM to cheaper SDRAM (cheaper than SGRAM because of volume?) points to the need for integrated (iRAM) like the MX has.

If I were S3, I'd work on a Trio chip with integrated 4mb of ram, and a 3D geometry setup engine to give it "average" nvidia type performance selling at $12 (like Trio).

This GX3/3.5/4 thing sounds ok, but they won't sell more than 5mm of these, unless its a MONSTER.

Their compressed texture technology should allow a 2MB integrated texture ram to run efficiently, but I think the 4mb max configuration will be desired by the market.

I think people want to play games in 1024x768 mode, not vga anymore.

For that you need a fast DAC and good 3D stuff.

JMO
bill
ps
S3 seems poised for a series of good news. Unfortunately, I'm reading lots of fears about a coming correction, which will wipe out any advantage S3 might have on a product announcement.

normal, eh?
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