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

To: Yeagher who wrote (13131)	6/6/1999 3:57:00 AM
From: Patrick Grinsell	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 16960

Yeager, it doesn't matter what 3dfx has planned to come next... Remember, just because a company releases a graphics card with what _they_ call "geometry acceleration", doesn't mean that it can seriously compete with "Rampage" or "Napalm" or whatever it's called this week. I think long term investors who don't have inside info (me hehe) are hoping (gulp) that 3dfx will once again blow away the competition. I'm still waiting for Glaze3d...and PowerVRSG...and Permidia3. All those card sounded good when they were announced. PowerVRSG in particular was supposed to wipe the floor with the competition. Sharky even declared the death of 3dfx after seeing it. The question isn't whether they can attempt to do something cool (3dfx has already stated they have stuff specifically for gamers coming up), it's whether they are actually able to do it. The more crap they add, the more complicated the chip. The more complicated the chip, the harder it is to design. The harder the design, the greater chance of delay or outright failure. If 3dfx tries to go too far with their design they may shoot themselves in the foot. In an industry where cycle times are six months this is a very scary thought. Someone over on Yahoo! mentioned that if NV10 gets delayed until 2000, TNT2 will be NVIDIA's only chip for this year. Yep. They'll totally miss the holiday buying season. It seems to me that 3dfx has to maintain a tightrope balance between time to market and functionality. I think they learned their lesson with Banshee. Ballard admits they made some wrong moves there. I guess it's trial by fire from here on out and we'll see if they made the smart decisions and learned from past mistakes. Pat

To: Yeagher who wrote (13131)	6/7/1999 11:46:00 PM
From: Plaz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

Well, Sharky said that he was told at Computex that the NV10 would definitely be a .18 micron part. In _that_ case, we won't see the NV10 in October - or even this year. Any thoughts on my speculation? I think your speculation is pretty good. If Intel doesn't think they can hack .18 micron until 1Q2000, then I doubt anyone else can either. Not and make money at it. Of course, NVIDIA will announce their NV10, with awesome specs, right during the launch of the V4. I'd bet on it. I'll be watching the time that it takes the competition to match the V4 (with shipping parts, of course). If it's < 3 months, this is bad. It means that we've entered a commodity business and 3dfx will likely never be able to distance themselves from the competition enough to take it to the bank (i.e. it won't break out of it's current P/E ratio). 3-6 month lead: would be sufficient to keep me interested. 6+ month lead? :-) Plaz