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Technology Stocks : 3DFX
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To: Patrick Grinsell who wrote (7866)10/5/1998 3:45:00 PM
From: Simon Cardinale  Read Replies (1) of 16960
 
Hey there Pat:

Getting the Banshee in action 6 months ago would have almost ensured a clean sweep among OEM's and we'd be that much closer to Rampage without the Voodoo2 design and development getting in the way.

Don't be so sure. OEMs don't buy the best quality, they go on a limited form of price/performance. They're buying better quality lately because they're selling 17" monitors the last year or so, but they're not moving to better cards quickly.

Think of all that money V2 made for 3Dfx. And it'll make more in the Christmas season.

I doubt 3dfx will have Rampage out in the first half of 1999 like management says. Banshee underwent major delays (I remember the date being moved at least 3 times) and it only used V1 technology.

I keep hearing this and I don't recall it. Wouldn't it have been a major topic of discussion? Can my memory be so bad? I know Banshee and V2 release dates were swapped, but aside from that... Can you give a link or quote?

In contrast, 3dfx took a year and a half to produce Voodoo2 which is essentially Voodoo1 at a higher clock speed with an additional TMU. (Something Quantum was already doing.)

I don't think this is true. Quantum had a Voodoo1 SLI which naturally had two TMUs, but working independently. V2 uses two TMUs working together to do single pass multitexturing (and so V2 SLI has 4 TMUs working in independent pairs). 3Dfx claims V2 is part of the same generation as V1, but I think this is hype to make their competitors look slow footed. Single pass multitexturing was an important step (or why would they have patented it?)

Of course if you accept V2 as being a small improvement on V1, and we know that 3Dfx had working Banshee 2D since 1996 or something (there was a quote in an interview somewhere) then where should they be with Rampage? This is at odds with your earlier doubt about Rampage's release date.

I would like to add that I am also somewhat dismayed by the state of the Banshee drivers. It's probably just multiple-glide files (as was the case with V2) but still... At least the 2D and D3D works right.

Simon
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