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

To: Eric Howard who wrote (7981)	10/7/1998 6:52:00 PM
From: Greg S.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

As a recent purchaser of a Creative Labs Banshee (I'll be sure to post when I receive it, what setup is like, image quality, games, etc.) I can tell you how I arrived at my purchase decision. To me, none of the combo cards out there are satisfactory. I plan on buying a new video card 9-12 months from now because I expect another great technological leap in that time period (I hope some bright one finally gets the idea to put geometry acceleration on chip!) But my Number Nine 771 2MB card is getting pretty old, and I want some power behind my new 19 inch monitor (in addition to good 3D gaming capability), so a combo card is right for me. But I'm not going to spend $150-200 on a card I know I'm going to replace in a year. HardwareStreet.com sells the Creative Labs Banshee for $105. With a $30 rebate that gives me ONE OF THE BEST (depending on how you view TNT vs. Banshee, but they both blow away the other competition) cards on the market, with 16MB RAM for a mere $75. That, my friends, is a GOLDMINE for someone like me, and I know I'm not one of a kind. :) My next purchase will most likely be the Rampage. If a competitor manages to come out with a superior product earlier (and it proves to be reliablenVidia manages to -G P.S. Chip, please give Tom hell for that article. Be nice, be rational, and simply point out the nuances and inconsistencies in his review that cast a horrible bias against 3Dfx - after all, if he's really unbiased, shouldn't he care that his "objective" article makes every 3Dfx card on the market appear worthless when clearly they're very very close (if not superior) to TNT?

To: Eric Howard who wrote (7981)	10/7/1998 7:17:00 PM
From: Chip Anderson	Respond to of 16960

I'll be honest, I won't be using the 3D side of my Banshee board much since I have V2s. The 2D stuff is great though and the price is right. The driver conflict issues are now resolved and I've solved all of my prior problems. In a month or two, these issues will be gone as board markers ship improved drivers. This is par for the course for most new products. If I got a TNT board instead of a Banshee board, I'd probably be in the same boat. I'd use it for 2D and my V2s for 3D. I'd be out a few more bucks though. Evidently, 3D acceleration in a window is still a myth. ;-( Glide 3.0 API docs say that Glide only works full-screen. Gamers that are starting out need to decide which is more important to them - faster framerates or Glide support. Since they are just starting out, they probably can't make informed decisions in either area and will rely on salespeople, in-store displays, game-bundles, and/or price to make their decision. Tom's review may fool some mid-level gamers into ditching their single V2 card and getting a TNT. I'll be watching the newsgroups to see if they are happier with that solution rather than moving up to SLI. 3Dfx is obviously preparing a big push to get V2 owners to move up to SLI and Tom's biased article will hurt that effort. As for myself, I probably will get a TNT card soon (shock!) to see for myself whether the image quality issue is for real or not. I'll chalk it up to Due Diligence! I hold TDFX now because I believe that they are further down the road to the _next_ generation (Rampage and beyond) than anyone else. Banshee has never been a (serious) factor in my long-term outlook. 3Dfx has been working hard on Rampage for 6-8 months now and I don't believe anyone else has started on a comparable chip yet (maybe BitBoys?). Banshee has always had "stop-gap" written all over it. OEM deals would be nice though... Chip