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 : Creative Labs (CREAF) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Duncan Lestina who wrote (9791)	2/16/1998 1:37:00 AM
From: Curbstone	Respond to of 13925

Hey Gang here is some good info on Voodoo 2 from Creative Management. Thanks to Ching Lee of Creative's Yahoo thread for first pointing it out. Originally posted to TDFX thread. This is part 1. First, I'd like to say that I wish I had more time to participate on this ng, but I'm supremely busy right now getting the 3D Blaster Voodoo2 ready to ship. There's a FAQ that we're trying to use to address your most common questions, you can find it on our web site. If I could answer every message personally, I would; I can't so you'll have to accept group postings like this one and use the FAQ whenever possible Second, there's a lot of speculation about us rushing the product to market. I'd like to address this, as I think there are some legitimate concerns and a whole lot of misconceptions in the messages. COMING TO MARKET TOO QUICKLY ---------------------------- We decided to build a Voodoo2 around September of last year and have been working with 3Dfx virtually every single day since then. The original schedule was very different (much earlier) for release, but it takes time to develop chips and boards with the complexity of a Voodoo2. We acknowledge that Feb 20 is an aggressive date, but what we risked wasn't board quality, we primarily risked a tremendous amount of money to get to market first. We're buying PCB on-shore (instead of the far lower cost options in Asia); we're getting it turned as fast as possible, paying a huge premium as a result; we're running multiple manufacturing lines over weekends and holidays; we flew in personnel from Singapore and our Oklahoma test facility to work side-by-side with 3Dfx to get the testing done, in short, we're doing everything it takes to get the product done. However, if we find out that there's a problem, we'll grind up every single one of those cards rather than knowingly send out an inferior product. It is impossible to buy back a reputation -- especially with the hardcore performance fanatics like you. I won't risk my future products (and product lines) foolishly. I do want to ask a sort of rhetorical question: if you knew I could've gotten the cards out the door and into your hands starting on the 20th but decided not to because we didn't want to risk the money or work as hard as we've had to, how would you feel about Creative? Isn't it amazing that Diamond changed their release from mid-March to Feb 24th? They probably could've shipped sooner, but likely didn't want to go to the effort -- or take the risks -- needed to accomplish that. Competition, especially between two strong companies like Diamond and Creative, really works to YOUR benefit. It certainly doesn't work to mine: I'm working Sat, Sun AND Mon to get this thing done!

To: Duncan Lestina who wrote (9791)	2/16/1998 1:38:00 AM
From: Curbstone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13925

Part 2: PROBLEMS WITH BOARD DESIGN -------------------------- As far as the engineering goes, we're as good as anyone at board design. As an example, it was one of our test engineers that helped get the design through FCC compliance testing -- the initial scan failed (not uncommon, by the way) and he determined the changes needed to clear Class B. The board is now fully compliant with FCC regulations. ACTIVE COMPONENTS (MEMORY) ON BOTH SIDES OF PCB ----------------------------------------------- Placing active components on the solder side of a card, while less common in PCs than in other applications, is a reasonable approach to solving very complex layout issues, especially ones with the critical timings that the Voodoo2 chipset has. I'd be willing to bet that Diamond uses active components on both sides too -- they're already doing it with their Fire GL Pro line (Permedia2-based) cards. Why don't you ask them? DRIVER DEVELOPMENT AND ROBUSTNESS --------------------------------- We are not doing our own driver right now. With the software talent at 3Dfx, we saw little we could do to improve game performance in the short term and we felt we could get to market quicker if we used their code rather than tweak it around. There are a lot of things that can be done to optimize synthetic benchmarks like 3D WinBench -- some reasonable, some of questionable value and some that are downright slimy. While we know that not optimizing for Direct3D benchmarks may hurt us, we think that providing 3Dfx's reference drivers with little or no modification will provide you virtually identical performance in a game to any other Voodoo2-based card, and keep you on track with the most recent version. If we're wrong about this, then we'll do our own drivers at a later date. In keeping with the spirit of the product so far, we'll see what YOU want and do that. If you're uncomfortable with ANY of this, please wait and buy someone else's board. While I don't think you need to do that, I'm not trying to FORCE anyone to buy my product. I build what I think is a good board, with the features and price that most of you want, and then let you decide if it is worth buying. Jim Carlton Product Marketing Manager, Graphics and Video Creative Labs, Inc.