🚀 go-pugleaf

shamelessless@hotmail.com wrote in message <881476661.17844@dejanews.com>...

[...]

>Anyway having said all this, you guys know when voodoo2 is coming
>out?
>Is diamond bringing something out in January?

As stated in the official announcements, at the end of Q1/1998, at the
earliest.  I've been seeing this "January" stuff, where does it come from?
Is it from some market bone-head in some OEM company?

[...]

>Wouldn't you say the delay of banshee is a shame since it
>will keep 3dfx from the comp. manuf oem market for
>a while?

Personally, I would like to see Banshee cards (well, there is a big "if"s on
its feature and performance, but...) on all the motherboards manufactured
NOW.  However, that ain't possible, is it?  Voodoo 2 is an unscheduled
product, which 3Dfx came out with put a stop to other competitors that are
coming out with a comparable or faster products (that is, 3Dfx still thinks
that a 3D-only add-on card has a marketability on gamers, which I agree).
Although you and I would like to see Banshee out as soon as possible (e.g.,
now), even the very talented 3Dfx people need a certain time period to
develop something (it's not like they had a ver fast 2D processor earlier)
and make it work (it's a silicon, you can't release "patches" periodically).
Although nothing is said officially about the performance and the feature of
Banshee, my guess is that it will have almost the same 3D unit as Voodoo 2
with added 2D unit that should be very fast (to roughly borrow Mr. Tarolli's
words, 3Dfx will do the best if they do it).

As for the OEM market, I am not worried too much about one or two quarter
delays from 3Dfx.  I've been seeing how _fast_ and _often_ these OEM
manufacturers re-shuffles their system setups.  Of course, it would hurt a
little, but remember the success of Voodoo 1 was its appeal to the hard-core
3D gamers and game developers, not 2D gamers, not certainly business app.
users.  Of course, eventually a lot of everyday applications will (or might)
need 3D hardware acceleration and other competitors will catch up.  That's
why 3Dfx is trying very hard to convince game developers to put features
that would make Voodoo 2 better than other competition into their current
projects, which I believe is where 3Dfx has been very good at.

No, it would have been much better, but one Q delay won't hurt that much.
The only thing I am more worried about is the delay of 3Dfx's full OpenGL
driver.  It's been in the beta stage for a while (okay, about a month now,
but it seems too long in this day and age) and hasn't been any updates on
it, not even on its newsgroup.

Hong.