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

To: Andrew C.R. Biddle who wrote (7381)	9/18/1998 9:07:00 AM
From: Scott Garee	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16960

Re: 3Dfx - No Platform Here. gamasutra.com Interesting article and well written. I like Omid's style, very Dave Barry'ish. He makes his points and defends them well, but I think he missed on a couple of them: "Make Direct3D for one company's hardware, and it would probably kick Glide's butt." Not likely, but if Direct3D was made for one company's hardware it wouldn't be Direct3D, so what's the point? Native drivers will always outperform generic drivers, unless someone really screwed the pooch on the native side. "Yup, there are a hell of a lot more people investing in Direct3D than in Glide." May well be true, but most of the investing is on the hardware side. If TDFX makes it cheaper and faster for a company to develop for Glide, while they still do D3D (but later), Glide will still succeed. Glide is going to gain a lot of monentum when it is the only thing supporting the new features of TDFX next card. (Granted OpenGL may also support it upon release.) I think the potential lock on the market is well worth the investment in Glide. It doesn't require any hardware, only software. As long as it is easy to program and TDFX offers to help its other benefits will help carry it. Now if TDFX does as I want and folds 3D audio into Glide, before MS can do it with DX, Glide will be the ONLY way to go for the hottest games. MS certainly pulled D3D from death's grip with DX6, but can they keep advancing it quickly enough? They can't really add any significant new features until the next round of chips, so TDFX/Glide has a > 6 month lead on the next generation. I wonder how much "feature direction" MS is "giving" to the other chip makers to ensure DX goes where they want it. If MS (or the chip companies) guess wrong and TDFX beats them on the features they will be hard pressed to catch up in one generation. Of course, MS has enough money that they probably don't get many surprises. I wonder, does MS consider TDFX a competitor, a partner, an IHV, or all of them?

To: Andrew C.R. Biddle who wrote (7381)	9/18/1998 10:18:00 AM
From: Jeff Lins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

My letter to Gamasutra- UGH! ------ regarding 3Dfx (TDFX). First, Intel is not their big competitor, neither is Whitney. These are mediocre graphics chips, the kind of part that somebody gets stuck with on an otherwise fine computer. Then they buy a retail add-in-board for serious 3D. This of course would likely be TDFX, as they lead the retail boards. Your statement about the earnings release "...we don't want anyone to be surprised by how bad we have actually done." is a little harsh. We don't have a clue "how bad" they have done. Though it is clear that they didn't sell as many chips as expected, boards are still moving. And until the numbers are out, we will not know how much of the loss is due to increased spending on advertising, R&D, etc. The real problem has been that chips have been purchased in large bunches over 2 quarters- not much revenue smoothing going on. Overall they have done very well and made a lot of money off of V2. So, you think that the graphics market can chew TDFX up and spit them out? I don't think so. Their name is strong, they are known for quality products, they have good retail distribution and evidently several large OEM deals coming. And don't forget that they have more cash than ANY graphics player out there (aside from Intel). They earn WAY more (EPS) than the number one player, ATI. This is just stupid: "Make Direct3D for one company's hardware, and it would probably kick Glide's butt." Your point? Does anybody make D3D SPECIFICALLY for anybody else's hardware? Do some developers SPECIFICALLY make Glide drivers? Sorry, mister. I hate being rude, but WTF is with the following: "Voodoo has been great, but everyone else is catching up, and will surpass it. The money is now being put into the 1999 chipsets. " Who "will" surpass it? Are you referring to the "next-gen" chips which are about as fast as our "last-gen" chips? Or are you the ONLY one that TDFX has shown their roadmap to? Perhaps you are referring to the awesome Bit-Boys (Oiy!) design. Or you have perhaps traveled to the future? JeffLins