Let's not jump to conclusions people. TNT hasn't said boo about TNT2 - quite unlike them. Is it ready? Quantum 3D has put 4 and even 8 V2's on the same card - high end expensive but it can be done. The V3 is shooting for high end flat panel users - no other chip can support this level of performance. The 3000 is fairly cheap and is one card - this was the goal. The V2 SLI config - by 3Dfx's admission - was not SLI'd nearly as much as people think - if I recall 20% rings a bell. The Voodoo 3 is not a mediocre stop gap measure when using any other company as a benchmark. The V3 is significantly faster than 2 v2's in SLI at what 1 V2 cost just a few months ago. That's significant improvement. The card is backward compatible and will be using stable drivers. Every game being sold will run smooth as silk on day one (or shortly thereafter). Metabyte has great people and I would not be suprised if they can pull this off. However, there will be some down sides to this approach (e.g. performance may not be as stable or as improved as one would expect, special drivers may be needed, etc.) Remember one last thing, TNT kicked Banshee butt because STB put the OEM package together. CREAF screwed Gateway and DIMD is no better. Banshee, the inferior card, outsold TNT at retail with no sweat whatsoever. Joe C.
P.S. My biggest problem with TDFX has been, and continues to be, how they make a lot of stupid little mistakes that make them look silly and unprepared - from av equipment not working at analysts conferences, contest links that don't work, giving a reviewer a bad card - the kinds of things that I spend a lot of time preparing for in my day to day business to make sure I don't look bad. Sometimes, it's this kind of attention to detail that can most hurt a lot of good effort and work by very capable people. |
