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

To: Chip Anderson who wrote (8628)	10/27/1998 2:23:00 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 16960

...relying solely on management's word for where 3Dfx will be in 8 months is risky at best. I agree, but if not the management, then whom would we get the info on product road maps from? It remains to be seen if, by the time Rampage appears, Banshee2 will still be compelling for OEMs. This is the single biggest worry for 3Dfx. Will they be losing the market lead, market share, and brand name while they transition from V2 to its follow up. I hope not. But only time will tell. In addition, as I stated before, I think that TNT's success in both the retail channel and the OEM channel should cause everyone to question the long-term viability of the 2-segment strategy. This I am not so sure about. There are many market segments and many different needs. I think I prefer the two pronged approach to the one size fits all approach. How do you measure TNT's success? Based on profit margins for its producer or the number of units sold? I seriously doubt either one is as good as Banshee's. Reviews don't pay the bills (not unless they translate into sales any ways). BTW I don't know if you read it, someone on MF claimed to be a computer store manager and showed numbers that claimed Banshee is way out selling TNT. Shopper.com seems to agree with this. Sun Tzu

To: Chip Anderson who wrote (8628)	10/27/1998 11:18:00 AM
From: Simon Cardinale	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

Are you sure that's Banshee2, Chip? Banshee2 is not a "major" follow-up from a pure technology standpoint. TDFX is simply reducing the die size, adding minimal 2x AGP support, and increasing the clock rate. Weaknesses such as image quality and lack of multitexturing support will not be addressed. The first 2X AGP Banshee we see may or may not be called the Banshee2. That's a marketing decision. However, Banshee is definitely the first in a family of OEM products. They've said it, and it's the only business model that can give them long term viability in a market where ATI has a dual texturing board in addition to its low end stuff. 3Dfxs big advantage is that because their core technologies are still half a year ahead of the competition they can send out an inexpensive OEM part at a time when their competitors are trying to sell an almost equivalent part (TNT, G200, Savage3D, and soon Rage 128) for top dollar. The geometry acceleration in Rampage makes it an ideal retail part as it will juice up older computers (like a P2-266 or 300 by the time it comes out). And the new purchasers going after the Katmai will definitely want it too, and so we'll see it in some hard-core gamer targeted OEM systems. However performance is rarely an important concern to OEMs. Acceptable performance with all the right buzzwords (16MB or 32MB, 2XAGP, and maybe 3Dfx for casual gamers) at a cheap price is what they're after. Simon I've just read over this message, and I can see that I'm running a fever again. Sorry.