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

To: Anthony Maza who wrote (7107)	9/12/1998 11:35:00 PM
From: Greg S.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

Let's put the issue of speed aside, since you MIGHT say they are equal (I disagree, but I won't tout speed as a reason). What about .. 1. Banshee is cheaper, by at least 30 dollars. 2. Banshee supports hundreds of great games that TNT doesn't - for lots of games, many graphics features and optimizations aren't available unless you've got 3Dfx power. TNT has zero developer support and DOESN'T HAVE ANY PROMISE FOR THE FUTURE. Hundreds of games being developed promise special 3Dfx optimizations. 3. TNT is ridiculously buggy, to the point that it can't be called a stable product (numerous complaints have been filed about crashes, egregious incompatibilities with BX chipsets, etc.) For crying out loud why do you think they had to drop the clock speed by almost 30%? The chip is a piece of crap! 4. 3Dfx has shown dedication to gamers - which means you have their support and I suspect customer service is probably very good. With nVidia the only thing you know is that they are dirty, lying sons of bitches. All other things being equal, how many more reasons do you need to buy a 3Dfx card? -G

To: Anthony Maza who wrote (7107)	9/12/1998 11:48:00 PM
From: Simon Cardinale	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

Real reasons not to buy TNT: 1) It doesn't work with some motherboards. 2) It can't play some games (FF7 for instance) because it doesn't support as wide a variety of texture types as Voodoo2. 3) Weird color problems in Windows (may be fixed by new drivers?) 4) You'll rot in H-E-double hockey sticks. Simon

To: Anthony Maza who wrote (7107)	9/13/1998 10:28:00 AM
From: Miguel M. de la O	Respond to of 16960

I hope you understood my reasons became more facetious as I went on. The first two are very serious. 600 plus games are OPTIMIZED for Voodoo, meaning then run on Glide which is faster than D3d. Approximately 100 of those run ONLY on Glide, will not run on TNT. For example, Unreal the best selling game this season came out supporting only Glide. I'm not sure if the D3d version is even out yet. Faster. Does not depend on who's benchmarks, depends on how the benchmark is done. Here's the patterns I've seen. If the game takes advantage of multi-texture support then Banshee loses to TNT and Voodoo2. So far the only big game I've heard that benefits from the TNT and V2 TMU support is Quake and Quake II. Where the game doesn't need this support, Banshee wins, even over a single V2. V2 is SLI kicks everyone's butt. Most important, TNT sucks on a "slow" processor. The high benchmarks you'll see for TNT are on 400 plus CPUs. If you running something slower, Banshee seems best, even better than V2.