RE: TDFX
Protege, looks good, but I would want to see a comparison to some other popular offerings. For instance, what is the fastest Diamond board specs? And Number Nine Video? and others? 128-bit 2D is not new. . .I think there are boards with 128-bit 3D now; nor is 16 Meg of RAM new. .
Some Note since I am a long term holder of TDFX.
Main Competitors: ATI and NVida. ATI holds the #1 OEM spot, not because they make great cards but because the make cheap, reliable cards. ATI does not compete on the high-end of 3D-Cards, they actually have a bad reputation with Power-gamers. N-Vida is the upstart and just recently ipo'd last month. They compete on the
very high-end and are quickly becoming the power-gamers choice of a 3D card, but alas TDFX was smart enought to brand themselves as the best, and Nvida cannot overcome that brand as of yet. TDFX by far leads in the retail market. (It owned the top 5 spots in '98) TDFX only hold OEM deals with 2nd tier companies like Micron, this may change soon (see below)
Diamond and Creative are not players. They are BOARD makers not chip makers. They get their chips from TDFX and NVIDA, for instance I have a Creative 3D-Blaster Vodoo-2 (Vodoo is TDFX's chip) which spots the TDFX logo on the board, box, software and docs. TDFX just cut off Diamond and Creative (see below)
The uncertainty
The wrench in the works and reason for the lack-luster stock performance is the impending takeover of STB. TDFX is buying them out (end of March) in order to become vertically integrated. Right now they just make chips. STB makes boards and chips, has manufacturing capabilities and the infrastucture to sell and distrubute the products. STB has OEM deals in place with 1st tier companies like Gateway, CPQ, DELL etc... STB also owns a chunk of NVIDA (hmmm). If TDFX can pull this off they will be in a position to take away the #1 OEM spot from ATI and also remain in the #1 reseller spot...
A few notes:
TDFX revs have went from $20million (IPO) to $160million (Now) yet the price is less then the ipo price.
TDFX next generation cards . While its true that the specs for the Vodoo3 3500 is somewhat disappointing - there are also other cards in the works for the summer (Rampage) TDFX keeps their product maps secret. I think this really hurts the stock short-term.
TDFX has a lawsuit agianst NVIDA for patent infringement.
I suggest anyone interested go to the TDFX thread there are many techy types as well as savy investors there.
JF |
