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

To: Patrick Grinsell who wrote (7546)	9/22/1998 3:29:00 PM
From: Michael Linov	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

Ironically, the console doesn't really have to be faster than a home pc... consoles are traiditionally limited to tv resolution (500-700 x 525), and thus, key benchmarks tend to be capped. TV's also tend to introduce "free anti-aliasing" to your scenes, allowing you to run even lower (320x212 or 320x525) resolutions without perceived loss of quality. Lower resolutions mean less bandwidth, greater performance, and lower memory requirements. Consider the following design AMD K6-2 or Intel Celeron (Cacheless) ($50), Voodoo Banshee ($30), A3D sound ($10) , 56K Modem chip ($20), 64M ram ($50) , 2 gb hd. ($75) Slightly modified version of 98 (remove all un-necessary crap, pnp, etc.) ($30), Glue+case/PS ($30). Optional Cable Modem interface for $99 (new cable modem interface chips have recently become available). The design would not use PCI, and would run all peripheral chips as local bus peripherals. Costs: About $300 based on todays commodity prices. Of course, a company with its own fab, who has a stake in this could clearly cut costs/ license chips, etc. Commodity prices are still falling, so by the time such a product hits the market, costs will be far more reasonbable. The above design would be a superior console, and could run ANY existing PC software. Clearly, it would run software designed for it faster/better.