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

To: Scott Garee who wrote (9533)	12/11/1998 4:25:00 PM
From: Eric Howard	Respond to of 16960

Scott, What are you going to buy for $120 today which is going to get astounding frame rates versus the $170 (I am guessing TnT or Fury) card. Both of those cards run about as fast or faster in 16 bit color as the Voodoo2 or Banshee. If you read the developers comments on VoodooExtreme you will see that it is not just an issue of 32 bit color. A bigger problem seems to be the 16 bit Z buffer and another issue is the lack of a stencil buffer. I first bought a Rendition board and then when the Voodoo came out I replaced the Rendition because the Voodoo was superior on the games I wanted to play. At this time I am not certain what board will be the "best" for the games coming out 1st quarter such as Q3A or Everquest. If the current Voodoo2 is slower then an I740 on Q3A today then why should I assume that doubling the clock rate is going to make the Voodoo3 better than the TnT or Fury running Q3A? Everquest is a 3D online RPG which supports Glide as well as Direct3D. Currently the Direct3D interface is limited to 640*480 but the only graphic card comparsion I have seen so far on this game recommends the TnT over Voodoo2 on the basis of both image quality and speed. Personally I do not care who the made the video card in my system as long as it does the best job on the games I want to play. I am not going to tell my friends what card I am using, I am going to show them. I do not know which graphic card will run Q3A best, I wish I did. However I do know that the people developing games used to rave about Voodoo and then raved even more about Voodoo2. Their reaction to Voodoo3 was different. I do not trust 3DFX to tell me what is important, I trust the people developing the games that I am going to be playing. Eric

To: Scott Garee who wrote (9533)	12/11/1998 4:30:00 PM
From: Chip Anderson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16960

I'll play devil's advocate (keep in mind I'm holding this sucker until Rampage arrives): "Astounding framerates" aren't obvious to new buyers until (possibly) after the purchase. "better 2d" is not a marketing point or issue at this point. Everyone's 2D support is, for all practical purposes, identical. "Glide" is still an important plus is 3Dfx's favor. They need to continue pushing that into customers' faces. From a marketing perspective, the question is "Is the framerate differential something the target consumer would notice?" Chip