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

To: Jeff Lins who wrote (9035)	11/17/1998 1:57:00 AM
From: Tae Spam Kim	Respond to of 16960

It looks to me that Voodoo3 is Banshee2 renamed. Not that this is bad, 3dfx upped the clock speed, added the 2nd TMU, and added a bunch of features to Banshee, so they could ship early next year with fastest card on the block. I expect the REAL 3rd generation Voodoo chip to come out late next year with the 32-bit features built-in. -Tae Kim

To: Jeff Lins who wrote (9035)	11/17/1998 2:19:00 AM
From: Patrick Grinsell	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16960

Banshee2=Voodoo3... Just a couple of comments. I've been up for too long without sleep, but todays news derserves something said about it. Banshee was designed to be part of the family and what Zacarias and others have been referering to as Banshee2 is really Voodoo3. The 2d/3d designs appear to have almost exactly the same functionality. DVD, Dual Pipe and RAMDAC appear to be the two major technology upgrades. Because of the Voodoo3 marketing move (of which I wholly approve) it looks like we will be seeing "little orphan Banshee". Announcing this far ahead of time is stupid for reasons Ballard has already stated. (He should stick with one strategy or the other.) I believe we'll see Voodoo3 in Q1, however. I now believe that the move from Q1 to Q2 for Voodoo3 was due to Ballard resetting expectations with the public. This solves the retail issues and makes them look like heroes in the analysts eyes. Smooth move if this is correct. 32 bit isn't probably that much better than 22 bit dithered but 3dfx should have learned their lesson with AGP 2x. Sometimes that's just how the game is played. All-in-all Banshee2 (Voodoo3) has exceeded my wildest expectations for this product. I expected Banshee2 to be a .25u 2 tmu, 32 bit, AGP 2x solution, and I think that's what everybody else was expecting too. The dual pipe and DVD are incredible additions. The WHQL news has been a constant worry of mine that has been laid to rest. Thank god. Ballard has already mentioned that capacity to serve OEM customers is a major issue. I believe we will see more big OEMs as 3dfx hits the sweet spot in production. With much of the uncertainty now mitigated this stock looks glaringly undervalued to me. It seems obvious now that they will be taking serious part in the OEM market in 1999. Even with all this, I think the best is yet to come. Set tops, Rampage, and a wide open OEM market look enticing. Pat P.S. What is the real-world performance of the Fury Chip? Does it hold its own?

To: Jeff Lins who wrote (9035)	11/17/1998 3:39:00 AM
From: Chip Anderson	Respond to of 16960

Hey Jeff, I agree that the 32-bit color stuff is not good, but I'd be amazed if 3Dfx ever supported AGP texturing. It's just plain doesn't provide tangible benefits over increased on-board memory. Of course then the 16MB limitation rumor makes no sense. I'll try and root out the problems on Tuesday. Also, now that I have the conference directory, I see that the majority of the 3Dfx competitors are clustered together in an out-of-the-way hall in the LVCC. This includes S3, STBI, and nVidia. I'll barnstorm them tomorrow also. Because you appear to be slowly going postal over the STBI/Banshee thing ;-) here's what they say in the directory: "STB Systems, a supplier of multimedia and convergence products is showing _new_ high-performance motherboards. A _new_ multi-function card that offers 2D/3D acceleration provided by the nVidia RIVA TNT, an onboard TV tuner with FM, TV in, TV out, and DVD playback support is on display. 2D and 3D multimedia accelerators are also displayed, including the RIVA TNT-based Velocity 4400, the 3Dfx Banshee-based LightSpeed 3200, and the S3 Savage 3D-based Nitro 3200. The Desktop TV, a TV tuner with FM support is demonstrated with the company's _new_ Visual Reality software." Chip "What-do-u-mean-local-calls-are-$1!?" Anderson

To: Jeff Lins who wrote (9035)	11/17/1998 4:10:00 AM
From: Chip Anderson	Respond to of 16960

Couple more thoughts on the conference so far: 1.) TDFX is doing this Voodoo3 launch thing _VERY_ well. It was well planned and coordinated. For instance, in the booth there are swinging spotlights with the V3 logo that direct people to "The Holy Box(tm)". "The Holy Box(tm)" contains the chips, cards, and motherboard lying on crushed velvet, resembling fine diamonds. The whole thing is in the center of the booth as the rightful centerpiece of the display. I just can't help but contrast this to the E3 experience where "Banshee" was an outlawed word. 2.) Creative is definitely pushing the TNT card in their booth. While there is some signs, boxes, and display stations for the Voodoo Blaster, the TNT stuff dominates. Many of the machines that are being used to demo the new EAX sound stuff feature the TNT chip. The TNT board is specially bundled with the EAX board during the show. (http://coolhistory.com/ChipsPics/Comdex/981116-Comdex39.jpg) 3.) A Taiwanese company, Trident, is featuring a poster that shows, in a blow-up form, the quality problems with Banshee, i740 and others (http://coolhistory.com/ChipsPics/Comdex/981116-Comdex43.jpg). They are shipping a chip called Blade3D which looks as good as anything out there but is slightly slower than a Banshee. The chip is very cheap though. 4.) All of 3Dfx's competitors appear to be reinforcing the idea that TNT is faster than Banshee with their performance charts. (http://coolhistory.com/ChipsPics/Comdex/981116-Comdex33.jpg) The 3Dfx 2D performance chart that shows the Wicked3D Banshee kicking butt needs _much_ more publicity. (http://coolhistory.com/ChipsPics/Comdex/981116-3Dfx12.jpg) 5.) Ran across a very interesting company called GigaPixel (http://www.gigapixel.com). They appear to create/design/license high-performance 3D cores using a new architecture. Claims great performance with tri-linear, anti-aliased everything and terrific scalability. Claims that several big customers will be announcing their stuff "really soon." Since they didn't have any hardware to demo directly (just movie loops), I couldn't verify any of their claims, but it sounded impressive and the loops showed multi-textured Unreal running at >1024 resolution. I'm gonna keep my eye on them. 6.) While Comdex _is_ exciting, we decided over dinner that CGDC is much better from a PC Gaming perspective. There are tons of booths here that are INTENSELY uninteresting. Chip "Hey, isn't that tiger _painted_ white?" Anderson coolhistory.com

To: Jeff Lins who wrote (9035)	11/17/1998 3:51:00 PM
From: Chip Anderson	Respond to of 16960

OK Jeff, Just finished at the STBI room. They are in a conference room off the floor. It looks really nice - dark, disco lights, lots of music, exciting atmosphere. The bad news is that the TNT card is prominently displayed and there were also two nVidia reps there answering questions. They also have a head to head comparison on the TNT card, the Matrox g200 and the ATi card running Quake2. Unfortunately, only the TNT card is running in hardware accelerated mode (doh!). The Banshee card was present in the back of the room without any literature. The guy I found to talk with wasn't too smart and couldn't tell me anything about future plans. I grabbed some generic literature, but couldn't get much else. FWIW, the nVidia and Diamond booths conference rooms are "By Invitation Only" so I couldn't get in. The S3 room was open and I got some good demos of their mega-texturing stuff. They've been putting lots of work into those demos. They weren't talking about their next generation stuff yet, but I was able to weasel out the fact that it will be AGP 4x, with multitexturing support. No time frame though. I'm headed back to the TDFX and CREAF booths this afternoon. Chip "Sore feet" Anderson