Chip, of the four options, the most likely is that Intel continues to improve the i740 with some feature improvements and die shrinks. Soon, they will have an excess of 0.25 micron fab capacity, when they move CPU's to 0.l8. This will set a minimum level of performance, which all companies will have to compete against. THe danger is they ramp the minimum too quickly and the other companies like TDFX do not innovate quickly enough or the market cannot come up with a killer app fast enough.
I do not think it is likely they will integrate graphics into the chipset. This would undo all the work they did in making AGP an industry standard. It would also increase the cost of the chipset, if they are doing short runs of chipsets that have fast moving graphics targets. Also, the chipset is done on older process, so they would not be able to keep pace with discrete graphics controllers. Finally, there are anti-trust concerns.
Intel's strategic interest in graphics chips is selling more Pentium processors. If people need good 3D graphics to justify sales of certain types of PC's, Intel will do what it can to catalyse that market. I think it has done this for the moment.
I also do not think AMD will integrate any graphics core with K7 or beyond. They have a hard time managing yields, so greatly increasing the product line or complicating the chip would be a hurdle for them. They also already have the support of Microsoft and others for their 3D extensions. AMD will not save TDFX.
As I wrote a week or so ago, I am still waiting on real Banshee announcements, and they are still not here. The stock will continue to drop until someone big announces Banshee support. I'd hate to see it drop a point or two per week, but that's what it's doing. Unfortunately, I think several companies are going to choose S3 Savage3d or stick with ATI. (CPQ, IBM) Gateway and Dell are left to choose for certain lines (Dimension, Destination). I bet one stays with nVidia, and the other, who knows? Could be a shut out.
Also, would you be long SIII?
Waiting, waiting for a Banshee win,
Matt
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