Patrick- my thoughts on the conspiracy!
.25 micron- no way. I just think that it would be too big a deal at this point in the game. Design, fab time, yield, etc. Too many probs at this point in time. And that is ok, since none of the immediate competitors are doing .25 right now (did S3 say they were doing this with savage?...).
-higher clock speed. This is possible. And it would be great. After all, the competition is doing it (supposedly). One of the problems would be heat. But hell, if TNT can crank along at that speed, as complex as it is, then I don't see why we can't. Maybe our card comes with a fan?
-2X AGP. Makes the most sense to me. It is the number one design flaw- from a marketing standpoint. And marketing is important for our end customer, the OEM's. I don't know how hard it is to redesign, but my understanding is that AGP can be supported in several ways and can be used to its fullest (limited though it me be at the moment), or that it can be used at only a certain level. It therefore may not be too hard to re-engineer the part so that it does indeed take advantage of SOME of the AGP features at 2X speed. Just enough so that the marketing guys can call it 2X.
Now, we know that everybody is going to want to make a banshee card. SO why haven't they announced? Because they want to mention it is a .25 micron part in the press release? Ho-hum. Because it will run at 125mhz? Yawn. Because it is a 2X AGP part? Hmmm....This is the only significant advertising bullet in our "conspiracy short list"
Last point...perhaps nobody is announcing because they have decided not to do a Banshee card...Just thought I'd toss a bit of reality in the scene. An objective third party might say, "You think that because nobody has announced cards based on your chip that there is a surprise in the wing? That it will be even better than expected? Maybe it just sucks..."
Waiting to hear which conspiracy turns out to be true... |
