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Technology Stocks : CRUS, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jan A. Van Hummel who wrote (5619)	4/19/1998 6:30:00 PM
From: grogger	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8193

What day does CRUS report? Is it Wed? Thanks, Rob

To: Jan A. Van Hummel who wrote (5619)	4/19/1998 6:49:00 PM
From: Synapsid	Respond to of 8193

I did some research on the new Intel motherboards with the 440BX chipset, and found the following: The mainstream board SE440BX has an optional CS4236B, plus an optional CS4611 PCI audio accelerator. This is new business. This reflects the "100% hardware SB-compatible" design that Cirrus was marketing last year. I believe Dell buys this board, but I don't think they're using the PCI audio option. The NLX corporate board (model eludes me right now) uses the CS4235 (new ISA codec with better margin than CS4236B). This board uses an ATI Rage Pro for graphics (440LX board used Laguna, but I doubt the volume was material). So I don't think this line is very high volume, but the push to build-to-order among PC OEMs could change that. Finally, the "Micro-ATX" Celeron board with the 440EX chipset has a Yamaha PCI audio chip (must be new, I didn't know Yamaha had PCI audio). Given that there is a transition to stand-alone PCI audio designs, I would have preferred to see a Crystal chip here too. I haven't seen a Cirrus stand-alone PCI audio design win anywhere yet. The move to Windows 98 should remove much of the concern for DOS SB-emulation, an area where Cirrus doesn't appear to have concentrated much effort; maybe we'll see design wins then. The Intel design wins should help fill the fabs over the next few months, although given the price pressure for audio parts I don't think there's much chance of incremental revenues.