Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : 3DFX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (13418)	6/23/1999 3:25:00 PM
From: Greg S.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

But since S3 is now closed to them, they have to make up whatever revenue came from S3 via nVidia Or they'll exit the market. Twelve or more boardmakers competing over a single chip that will make or break their board sales - not gonna happen if you ask me. Did all of these boardmakers make boards exclusively for 3dfx chips? If so, then nVidia's next chip must obtain a market share comparable to what 3dfx had sometime after the V2 when it was swarmed by boardmakers, and that happened while 3dfx had far and away the leading technology. You could argue that nVidia has made a name for themselves with their TNT2 technology, and it might be superior to the V3, but you HAVE to agree that if any, nVidia has only a very marginal lead over 3dfx. And I doubt every single one of those vendors is going to line up to flood the market with boards all based on a "marginally" better chipset. The chip has to sell in droves for them to get a piece of the pie worth eating. You could point to Intel x86 compatible motherboard makers as a counterexample (there are slews of profitable mobo manufacturers) but the market here is orders of magnitudes lower (Intel chips DO sell in droves), and consequently I don't think there's room for that many boardmakers. 20, no way. I say half the boardmakers look elsewhere. Of course, impact on nVidia's revenue (from boardmaker exit) will probably be nil, because they wouldn't have used nVidia anyway. -G