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

To: Patrick Grinsell who wrote (11013)	3/8/1999 7:45:00 AM
From: Mike Milde	Respond to of 16960

Why on earth would you take a board and "tweak" it before testing it? Even worse, why would you complain if you broke it in the process?? I don't see anything credible in his tests. Mike ------- From Sharky: We've taken our Voodoo3 3500 (the second one) for a test run with our new Pentium III 500MHz test machine and updated the Voodoo3 preview with the scores. Unfortunately we listened to what 3Dfx interactive told us- which is that this second board was supposed to be clocked at 183MHz. We've got a private utility that checks the clock speed and yet again it was originally clocked at 166MHz. Once again we did some registry tweaking and managed to get the board running at 179MHz and no higher. Even so it wasn't exactly stable at this speed, which raises our original doubts upon the memory yields at 183MHz. The board is now in 'critical condition' and is 'cooling off'.

To: Patrick Grinsell who wrote (11013)	3/8/1999 10:35:00 AM
From: David R. Parker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

Might as well profit from "the pattern".... Sold my STBI at 8.50-8.375 Friday and Monday (basis of 6.9375) that I purchased in January. Will repurchase if/when it hits 7 again. Don't be too hard on me...I just recovered 25% of my losses in TDFX that I wrote off in December. Now if the pattern will just repeat a few more times.... David

To: Patrick Grinsell who wrote (11013)	3/8/1999 4:07:00 PM
From: Jeffrey P	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

Jeff, assume you are right and that the board was supposed to be 166 mhz. This means 3dfx was lying instead of sending a bad board. Pat, that is not what I was suggesting. I had a couple problems with this whole situation. But before I rant, what Turok scores were you comparing against (per your post)? 1) I was questioning the accuracy of sharky's private utility that gave him a clock setting of 166mhz. 2) Even if the board was clocked at 166mhz, I have never heard of someone benchmarking and increasing the clock speed (heard of reporting increased clock speeds in system tests, but never of a tester feeling that the board is at an incorrect setting and arbitrarily increasing / tweaking the settings on a board they are testing) Matter of fact, remember last year when Mercury tested the banshee, they stated that the shipping drivers of the one of the banshee cards they were testing had their refresh rate set to 60hz, and it was basically not their position to adjust it. Sharky's card had no lcdfx port, no tv out, and not bundle. It was not a finished product, and due to the lack of the above mentioned parts, I would propose that it was more of an alpha product than anything. Why would they send newest beta generation to reviewers, when they are actively using those for driver generation and testing. Send the "reviewers" obsolete or "rougher" products that have exhausted their life cycle in the course of testing. (better use of capital.... i like it). Far as i'm concerned, this whole Sharky episode smells more like rotten fish all the time. Ride the pattern, be happy, buy 3dfx (sue Nvidia :P ). Jeff P.

To: Patrick Grinsell who wrote (11013)	3/9/1999 7:09:00 AM
From: Michael G. Potter	Respond to of 16960

Pat, Other than doubting Sharky's "private" utility, I also think that he was commenting on the memory speed, not the chip speed. 3dfx may be able to get their chip working at 183, but I think that memory makers are having a little trouble getting their chips to perform as well. As for management, I think the purchase of STB was a good move. When the proxy is out and the quiet period is ended, I'll be better able to judge that. Plus, the number and quality of OEM wins will be telling. Saying that Rampage will save the day sounds nice, but the V3 was going to be their OEM killer chip. We'll see. Michael