Patrick G.: You're the conspiracy theorist par excellance...what's your take?
Well, if we take the data from the top I think we can at least get an indicator of what we'll see.
1) Diamond still has no Voodoo2 inventory
2) The picture shows an SLI configuration of 2 12 MB boards. The configurations appear standard reference. (No extra TMU's).
3) I have been informed that 3dfx intends a major SLI push for the 4th quarter
4) 3dfx has stated they intend to start their new ad campaign this quarter
5) Something is coming October 12th
6) 3dfx execs have confirmed (only recently) that revision 3 is coming in actuality
7) The two headed Orangutan appears in both the PC Gamer add and the website containing the Oct 12th prediction
8) SLI configurations are being sold from multiple companies (Guillemot, Canopus) for $300 with most of these decreases coming within the last few weeks
Okay, now what is coming on October 12th? The first possibility is that 3dfx is actually preannouncing their add campaign which will intentionally focus on SLI in order to get a little sellthrough. If this is the case then somebody forgot to tell diamond. As of Oct. 12th the sellthrough will increase but guess what, Diamond doesn't have anything to sell. Even if they were phasing out Voodoo2 inventory it would at least be helpful to have some minimal inventory on hand for the Christmas season. I can only conclude that either Diamond no longer will sell Voodoo2 (what? they are still outselling TNT according to shopping.com!) or this new thing coming October 12th is not the new add campaign.
Okay so it isn't the add campaign. Maybe it's a push for revision 3? The problem with this is that until just recently (the last couple of weeks) nobody was even intending on doing a revision 3. Now the "Power of 2" monkey shows up on the web site. See, this is important in that PC Gamer had to get that add several months ago. Whatever this new thing is, it apparently ties in to this damn monkey and has been several months in the planning. As of last month Steve Schick was denying that there were any revision 3 takers at all. In addition 3dfx downplayed revision 3 as a memory enhancement yielding slightly improved results. Would 3dfx make a new product announcement for a board revision? If so what does revision 3 have to do with SLI? Clearly the website is implying something about SLI so I don't believe revision 3 to be the central figure here.
My personal opinion is that the monkey represents one body with two heads. ie. one board with two processors. It is possible for 3dfx to do a reference design similar to the X-24 but utilizes the revision 3 memory enhancements for even more power. What more would a power user want? (My dream would be a single board SLI banshee, but Sun appears to have rained on my parade.)
This is all, of course, in my not so humble opinion.
Pat "spooky Mulder" Grinsell |
