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Technology Stocks : S3 (A LONGER TERM PERSPECTIVE) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JerryP who wrote (12310)	11/20/1998 6:10:00 PM
From: Don Earl	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14577

Hi Jerry, <Santa Clara-based S3 Inc. should also be showing the Savage 3D-2 behind closed doors, industry sources reported. However, the appearance of the next-generation chip depends if S3 receives a working test sample back by the show's opening, they said.> From: ebnonline.com I've gotten in the habit of looking real close at the way some of these articles are written. There really is a huge difference between "news" and "rumors". Like what the hell does "industry sources reported" mean? What "industry": Semis? Autos? Soap suds? And, who's the source: An exec. at S3? A secretary? A janitor at the soap suds company? I like seeing my stock go back up, but it sort of makes me uncomfortable when half the articles are made up of smoke. Or is that written by folks that have had too much to smoke. For those who like TA I believe we saw a resistance breaking move today. According to theory, next resistance should be in the mid 8s. We'll see. Regards, Don

To: JerryP who wrote (12310)	11/20/1998 6:32:00 PM
From: Synapsid	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14577

I think the best way to describe the graphics chip business now is as super-competitive. ATI, NVIDIA, 3Dfx (as well as S3) all have new chips directly targeted at PC OEMs, and are putting significant marketing power behind them (as well as Matrox), while Intel is also in PC OEM space with its "Whitney" chipset. S3 might still have a time advantage though for the OEM-directed product. Meanwhile, in the "low-cost" segment, there are signs of 8 MB memory becoming more of a standard feature. S3 currently does not have a chip (Savage3D apparently isn't low-cost) for the low-end segment that supports more than 4MB memory. Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) of Taiwan does have a low-end chip that supports 8MB (even Diamond is shipping it). Some local retailers have been including somewhat higher priced i740-based boards in systems not for performance, but for 8MB video memory, and given lower priced alternatives they will go for those instead. I have seen a Taiwanese manufacturer's webpage mentioning "Virge/GXL" in the fourth quarter, but given excess inventories of older products it seems unlikely that S3 will go on and release that product (presumably equivalent to the "Trio3D AGPx2" product mentioned earlier, with 8MB SDRAM support). The upshot is, even in the low-end segment memory size limitations are hurting S3, as they did in the high-end with Savage3D.