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

To: Joe C. who wrote (4634)	6/23/1998 11:23:00 PM
From: Tae Spam Kim	Respond to of 16960

I disagree that 3dfx is trying to slow down the product life cycle. I remember when Voodoo2 was released, they said in the future the product life cycles will be shorter. So don't be surprised if 3dfx is ready to go with "rampage" in early 1999. Tae Kim oursquare.com 3Dfx's Next Chipset Goes on Rampage Details are scarce but sources have indicated that the next 3Dfx chipset is currently called Rampage. June 23, 1998 It's no secret that 3Dfx has been hard at work on its next chipset. 3Dfx co-founder Scott Sellers has always maintained that despite the new direction being set with Banshee, the first priority for the company is to maintain its technological edge in the high performance 3D arena. Next Generation Online has learned that, at least for now, the chipset's name is Rampage. According to sources, the chips will shift to a .25 micron process that should allow for considerably more real estate, faster clock speeds and cheaper manufacturing than the .35 micron process that is currently employed in the fabrication of current Voodoo products. 3Dfx has previously told Next Generation Online that it has not added new features to Banshee because of potential developer confusion and that it was saving them for its next big step in technology (obviously Rampage). At E3, Next Generation Online spoke with Sellers regarding the future of 3D hardware where he highlighted two major issues at the pixel level: "Certainly the low hanging goal is full scene anti-aliasing with no performance penalty, no software interaction other than turning on a bit and it works. It's a very difficult problem. So anti-aliasing is one key thing at the pixel level. The second key thing I think is going to be the lighting. The traditional lighting algorithms were developed really for the CAD market. The lighting that's in OpenGL, the lighting that's in Direct3D is really very inappropriate for gaming. You've started to see some lighting hacks such as light maps (as Quake and Unreal use). I think the next step on that is really doing it at the pixel level so that it's more lifelike. You have to change the paradigm to be able to really take it to the next level. Right now, we're really lighting virgins." Given Seller's focus on these two areas, it's quite likely that we'll see Rampage focus on attacking these issues. As far as any performance targets go, there is no solid information available though the prospect of it coming in at less than Nvidia's TNT performance is unthinkable. One of the major questions that remains to be answered is whether or not the product will be 3D-only (like previous Voodoo incarnations) or whether it will make use of the impressive 2D pipeline that was developed for Banshee. Logic would dictate that if there's room on the chip and the fabrication prices or cheap enough that it would indeed be an integrated solution (especially in the face of a major competitor being the TNT). Speculation on timing for Rampage's arrival is already happening. Given a 12 to 16 month life cycle for Voodoo 2 (the period of time most 3D silicon companies are using for product lifecycles, though admittedly 3Dfx is trying to slow the cycle), Rampage should show itself around mid-1999.