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To: Jeff Lins who wrote (10417)	1/30/1999 10:51:00 PM
From: Michael G. Potter	Respond to of 16960

I'm sure they'll get some more banshee sales and V2 sales as well. If nothing else, they'll sell to the clone makers in Taiwan and whatever European cardmaker that teams up with them. Depending on Creative Labs' and Diamond's stock of boards, they'll probably sell some more to them as well. It won't really help 3Dfx all that much and they'll profit on it. In the CC, they said that Q4 results are a possible case, but could be worse. If Ensoniq (CL) is still making the Banshee for Gateway, they'll get a bunch more Banshees. If the TNT is the big seller, then STB will reduce their inventory and generate cash which will help 3Dfx as well. My big worry is OEM wins. We won't hear anything until sometime in April (from the CC) and the V3 is a very good chip, but it isn't the automatic winner as far as I can tell. S3 will come back strong with their new Savage chip (if it works), TNT2 may be out then as well (nVidia is public now, maybe we'll here more), and ATI will still be strong. I think that the STB acquisition will make the difference and 3Dfx will continue to grow. If Rampage is as good as the speculation, they'll do very well at the end of the year. Michael

To: Jeff Lins who wrote (10417)	1/31/1999 4:27:00 PM
From: Patrick Grinsell	Respond to of 16960

Next topic: anybody expect q1 revenues to exceed a thousand dollars? Seriously, Q1 has GOT to suck. Any guesses as to what revs will be? Not so bad as you might think Jeff. We can use the Banshee ramp as an example. Remember Banshee started actually shipping at the end of September/beginning of October depending on the board manufacturer. We have roughly the same timeframe here. During Q3 3dfx was able to kick out ten million dollars worth of Banshee but most of the corrosponding boards shipped in Q4. No reason to think we can't do another 10 million for Voodoo3. As a matter of fact, those of you that took the time to look will have noticed that inventory was basically unchanged for the period ending 12/31/98. By all reports, 3dfx has been playing catch-up with Banshee and I doubt that is what we are seeing there. The previous conference call (Q3) had mentioned that the large portion of that was actually Voodoo2 which is no longer in production. If we sold 500K units of Voodoo2 last quarter inventory should have been reduced by about 7.5M by my estimates (cost $15 per chipset). I assume that the re-ramped inventory is because Voodoo3 is getting ready to roll and the inventory levels suggest we may see much more than just 10M in Voodoo3 this quarter. At least double that if the inventory is a reliable indicator (which it isn't :-0). All that aside, if the merger happens this quarter throw all your spreadsheets out the window as we will be seeing a combined 3dfx/stb statement. If it happens next quarter then 3dfx will be allowed to do a little shifting accross quarter bounderies via STB as per my previous discussion on this topic. Since they will be supply constrained they need only change the chip price. Ballard did mention that there is more chance for upside than downside in the conference call depending on shipment of Voodoo3 but I was probably the only one listening. That means at least mid-forties for revenue. I think Ballard was just hedging his bets in case a fatal flaw is shown in V3 that makes them go back to the drawing board. Tried to get hold of DZ but he never called me back. Serious questions left the door wide open with analysts once again asleep on the job. Why is the inventory still so high? How much is finished goods? Is Voodoo3 shipping now? Will there be a deal with European board vendors by the time of the lauch? Is Banshee still in production? Pat

To: Jeff Lins who wrote (10417)	2/1/1999 1:00:00 AM
From: timbur	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 16960

Re: 32 vs 16 bit Hate to rehash, especially when I'm doing this from memory. But the problem with the 16 bit display really isn't the display of 16 vs 32 bits, but the internal transformations needed to get there. With each pass, precision is lost. As I understand it, Voodoo does internal representations at 22 bits, then dithers down to 16 bits. So it's not nearly as bad as it could be. And to my eyes, it's not bad at all. How about a little feedback from those who have both a TNT and a SLI in their computers? I keep avoiding installing my TNT.... Tim