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

To: Simon Cardinale who wrote (7445)	9/20/1998 11:00:00 PM
From: Baldur Fjvlnisson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

Say, what's Baldur's Gate? A game? Regards, Baldur Fj”lnisson.

To: Simon Cardinale who wrote (7445)	9/21/1998 2:04:00 AM
From: Waldeen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

Second Simon's questions for 3Dfx and add one... although I might move number 3 (Banshee SLI) to head of list. Add the following 5) Who is 3Dfx looking at for possible acquisitions or partners? Would like to have names of possible acquistions or partners, but doubt they will offer up any. A little sorry to hear that Ballard has seemed to already eliminate Nvidia, although can understand his reasoning. Simon, did you see the following link posted by Pravin Kamdar over on the 3d Labs forum? mdronline.com@8798108kzvhxv/events/mpf/mpf_conf1.html > Glint Gamma 3: A High-Performance Geometry Accelerator > Neil Trevett, 3Dlabs > 3Dlabs will disclose its third-generation geometry accelerator, > capable of performing transform and lighting calculations for 32 > million polygons per second in an AGP 4X system. Any thoughts on this? Would the type of geometry acceleration being developed by 3Dlabs keep Voodoo2 in SLI from being CPU limited? Or, do you think another type is preferable? Third generation, hmmmm. On a more esoteric note, I've commented on how graphic accelerators look inherently parallel, the above link also contains the following: > The Evolution of 3D: The Path to Photorealism > Donald P. Greenberg, Cornell University > Professor Greenberg will explain his view of how the anticipated > processing power and bandwidth of tomorrow's microprocessors will > drive a radical shift from the standard direct lighting pipelines > to pixel-based approaches. By shifting from polygon- to pixel-based > computations, the inherent parallel computation capability of the > general-purpose processor will ultimately replace accelerator > boards. Future algorithms will be physically based in their initial > computation modes and convert to perceptually based implementations > at display time, creating images of photorealistic quality. Very esoteric and futuristic, but as triangle/polygons get smaller and smaller, and realism gets closer and closer, triangles become pixels. Of course I totally disagree with the statement about it replacing accelerator boards with the quick turn around time in current graphics chipsets. Wish this "urban legend" would die. But if 1999 is going to be the year of 3Dfx then what do they have up their sleave: SLI with geometry acceleration? Makes you want to know more about their roadmap. So on the 3dfx roadmap: If Banshee2 where to be SLI on a single card, I would 'hope' that they wouldn't be so bloody secretive about it's release date. Wouldn't such information eat into TNT retail sales? Banshee is cheaper, and Banshee2 SLI would be drop-dead faster, so who would buy a TNT? Either choice, cost or performance would lead you to a Banshee. Might have some delaying accepatance rate on Banshee, but lets assume for now they announce the OEM wins first.... Waldeen