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

To: David Rosenthal who wrote (8019)	10/8/1998 12:12:00 PM
From: Michael Linov	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16960

2D Speed on the Banshee is NOT the same. WinBench is a poor test of video card performance (more of a CPU test). I own an ATI Rage Pro, Permedia 2, Matrox Milleneum I, Matrox MGA 200. I can tell you categorically, that the Banshee blows them all away by 1.5-2x (vs. the matrox, and over 5-10x for the other two). Image quality at 1600x1200 seems the same as the MGA 200 (can't tell them apart). I would have no problem recommending a banshee as a corporate desktop standard today. (If you asked me a month ago, I would have gone with Matrox... now I'm not so sure, Banshee is better in every way,and much cheaper). It's ironic, but it may well be a 2D card than will pay the way for 3dfx's future success :) Side note: 3dfx's stock is being manipulated by shorts in the past 2 days. I have trading data from yesterday, and am trying to get a level 2 feed for today. Does anyone here have a reliable level 2 (with MM data) data dump for 3dfx for the past few weeks?

To: David Rosenthal who wrote (8019)	10/8/1998 1:56:00 PM
From: Greg S.	Respond to of 16960

Competition. One thing that Chip brought up that everyone seems to be ignoring is that the other designers are killing themselves to merely "keep up". Stay in perspective! There's a reason many of us continue to flame cracked-out columnists who say 3Dfx is dead. Maybe Voodoo2 is dying, but by next year the other companies are going to have a whole new challenge to tackle. Congratulations nVidia, your new product successfully competes with a product of six months ago. Here's a handshake and some OEM deals. Of course, 3Dfx is probably 3-6 months ahead of you on the next generation product so best of luck in '99. To respond to a couple of statements I've heard around here: If you don't know your competition well enough, then don't make the statement. Hell, TNT is STILL 40% slower than originally advertised, and it beats Banshee on most games. How bad did they think nVidia was going to screw up? So if I advertise a card that will ship with a 256-bit wide 400MHz RAM bus, quadruple 2GHz processors, and full hardware geometry and texture acceleration available for $299, and end up shipping a 2D-only card with 1MB of VRAM (but a really -good- 1MB card!) for $49, I have done something in any way respectable? To me this is an indicator that 3Dfx knows nVidia -MUCH- better than we do. They were probably surprised nVidia could (or would) bump up the date so much, but I think they banked on nVidia's poor credibility with good reason. TNT was released at the end of the summer. This was what Nvidia had stated when announcing the card in the Spring. It was one year after the release of the Riva128, also on time. The .35 decision could not have been a last minute decision though the final clock speed reduction to 90 was. The drivers were not quite ready but most problems were resolved within four weeks of release. I don't consider this a rush to market. The reality is that they could get away with the decreased performance (still a good part) but not a late delivery date and so they made the necessary decisions to deliver. I think this is execution as a company. I can't believe I'm hearing this. Sure, in a business sense they "executed" well. But the simple, unequivocable fact remains that they promised something they could not deliver, and have not yet proven they can deliver, so they rushed an inferior version out the door to compete with Banshee. 3Dfx has consistently delivered what was promised, if not exactly when it was promised. Chip is absolutely right that no company -- small or large -- can exactly predict release dates of products that are not yet ready. There are too many unknowns. Read that again: TOO MANY UNKNOWNS. nVidia managed to be on-target with the date by being horrendously off-target with the product. I think 3Dfx is far more skilled at evaluating its own capabilities than nVidia. Now let's talk about 1Q '99. Why are we all so worried? (this is rhetoric, I've read everyone's ad-hoc analysis of margins, sales, etc.) Maybe another new combo card or two out there to compete with. Banshee will undergo a revision, as will TNT. But I am confident that 3Dfx's revisions to Banshee will be much more significant than TNT's, because 3Dfx has been infinitely more forthright (as much as can be expected) with their technological capabilities. Banshee specs are on target with its original marketing. I think we all have every reason to believe the Banshee 2 revisions will be as promised, and the TNT revisions will be 40% less effective than promised. And by the time the dust settles and the combo card winner is declared (whoever that may be), news of the Rampage will be seranading us to glory, because I firmly believe that we are WELL ahead of the competition in that arena. Do you honestly think that 3Dfx just sat on its cash all summer and fall and ONLY worked on Banshee? Let's try to give them a little credit, because they still deserve it -- unlike some other companies out there. -G