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

To: Yeagher who wrote (13609)	7/6/1999 4:53:00 AM
From: Patrick Grinsell	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16960

Yeager, Sorry to see you go. I agree with you that 3dfx has yet to prove that they can execute. I, however, also believe 3dfx has yet to prove they can't do it either. We all know that Voodoo3 is the Banshee2 that was never meant to aspire to anything more. Although this may be an example of management's lack of foresight, I don't consider it a technological failure on the part of 3dfx. The uncertainty that you mention about upcoming products and lack of visibility has always been a concern with 3dfx (and one of my major gripes). It was probably a concern when you bought the stock as well. I used to think about 3dfx in terms of technology. If 3dfx made the best technology then success would follow. What's wrong with that picture? I, for one, am a long term investor. I want to know which company has the best chance at succeeding in the long run. With technology changing every six months the best way to do this is look at the company's ability to deliver cutting edge product. NVIDIA has shown that they can do this better than anyone else so far. Back to back RIVA 128 and TNT success has shown what they can do in short timeframes. The only thing 3dfx has shown is that they can make incremental changes to the Voodoo architecture...something that even crapiest competitors wouldn't find extremely difficult. Clearly, if R&D expendature is any indication of maintaining a technology lead, 3dfx easily wins hands down. It has always made me nervous seeing such a rediculous amount of money being spent while NVIDIA is passing 3dfx with half the R&D. Also, I think you are jumping to conclusions about the Register article. If you believe that 3dfx wanted S3 for their next generation chip (GX4) then you must also believe that 3dfx doesn't think they have the ability to create such a chip. Since GX4 doesn't exist yet it would basically be a paper comparison of features to 3dfx's next part. Call me stupid but wouldn't it be a lot easier to tell your engineers to add two additional texture pipelines to their design (or whatever the feature is) rather than buying an entire company? No. The reason for the takeover bogus and so it makes the whole rumor very questionable. Bottom Line: Although you have already made up your mind I think the jury on whether 3dfx can deliver the technology. As for everything else, I believe 3dfx has the best corporate stategy to achieve success. Pat