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Technology Stocks : S3 (A LONGER TERM PERSPECTIVE) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don Earl who wrote (11588)	7/23/1998 7:25:00 PM
From: Stephen Nelson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14577

I normally don't like having to search for a silver lining in a quarterly release. This one seems a bit tarnished, but I agree that the cash position surprised me (happily) as well as the reduction in liabilities. Key is sales. Forget everything else. I have stayed w/ S3 since the $15's primarily because of the value of the hard assets. Now is the time for S3 to begin operating like a real tech company. Sales, sales and more sales!!!

To: Don Earl who wrote (11588)	7/23/1998 8:30:00 PM
From: Synapsid	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14577

Obviously the key issue for S3's near-term recovery is in what volumes the Savage3D chip can be produced and how soon. It is a 0.25 micron chip, a new process technology at S3's fabs (could be USC, TSMC or perhaps initial production is at a different, high-premium foundry). NVIDIA was talking about being able to go into high volume production on its RIVA TNT part very soon (0.35 micron version, with cut-down specs), while competitors would be delayed by 0.25 micron technology. Whether this applies to S3, I don't know. I would be skeptical of expectations of huge material impact from Savage3D this quarter. Especially if it's in a niche high-end product. Savage3D does have an advantage over TNT when considering mainstream graphics boards -- with a 64-bit memory interface, it can use cheap SDRAMs for an 8 MByte configuration, whereas the TNT with its 128-bit memory interface can only utilize SDRAMs in a 16 MByte configuration, limiting NVIDIA's marketing flexibility (this is true as long as commodity 16 Mbit SDRAMs are cheaper than SGRAMs).