3dfx has released new drivers for the Voodoo 3 3500 TV.

Both AVault and Thresh's FiringSquad have an interview with 3dfx's Brian Burke on the resignation of CEO Greg Ballard, yesterday.

Woah, pretty big news sent in by Sean Simon, 3dfx has announced the resignation of their CEO. Greg Ballard. This can't be a good thing. Here you go:

3dfx Interactive® Inc. (Nasdaq: TDFX - news) today announced that L. Gregory Ballard, its president and chief executive officer, has resigned effective October 31, 1999. The Board of Directors announced that an immediate search would begin for his successor.
<snip>
``Greg has contributed greatly to the success of the Company, and we are sad to see him leave,'' said Gordon Campbell, founder and chairman of 3dfx Interactive, Inc., on behalf of the Board of Directors. ``The Board will take this opportunity to bring in an executive to continue the exceptional growth that 3dfx has enjoyed. I have pledged my time and efforts to seeing that the transition is smooth and causes no disruption to the conduct of our growing business.''

SharkyExtreme has posted a new 3dfx interview with Scott Sellers. While there check out this TFX1 follow-up article.

Voodoo3.net has posted a Q&A with Brian Burke of 3dfx. They talk about the regular stuff like FXT1 and all that jazz. A bit more personal than most.

Forgot to link this one the other day, Creative Labs is selling Voodoo2 boards for like $20 and $30. Can't beat that.

Scott Smith spotted this post on SiliconInvestors giving quite a few answers from 3dfx on the delay of the Voodoo4/Napalm. To quote, "Well, strictly speaking, there was no single feature that made this product late. As I have explained in other forums, the delay was principally in the "physical back-end", literally the last stage before the product goes to the fab and after the design phase has taken place. The delays were not due to feature additions per se but more to the overall complexity and density of the chip."

SharkyExtreme sent this quote from Brian Burke of 3dfx which several people have been forwarding around. Not quite sure who Brian originally sent this to since I've seen the entire email posted on a few sites but here you go. Word from 3dfx on the delay of the Voodoo4 Napalm:

"Some of 3dfx Interactive's executives have stated publicly that our next generation product may be delayed until Q1 and may not ship in Q4 in time for Christmas. Because of a few minor setbacks (that have been corrected), the Q4 date is admittedly very aggressive. With a technology product like this, it is not uncommon for unforeseen circumstances to arise in the final stages of product development. As a result, we are steering the public to expect our next generation product in Q1, because we believe this is the most probable result. We are standing by our statements that our next generation product will be head and shoulders above competitor's products and will solidify the technology lead for 3dfx. Additionally, our internal roadmap will maintain that lead for 3dfx well into the future"

Seems 3dfx decided not to announce it after all. However, a friend pointed me to this post on Silicon Investor by Michael Potter that he had an email exchange with 3dfx President/CEO Greg Ballard. In it, Ballard confirms the rumors that have been going around, which is that 3dfx will indeed miss Q4 with Voodoo4.

There is no press conference scheduled, nor is there a "formal" announcement being made. We have started today to inform investors that we have determined that Napalm will not ship in the 4th quarter or if it does, too late in the quarter to have a meaningful impact on revenues. We now expect it to ship in mid February with an outside chance of mid March. We expect that when it does ship, it will be the leading performance chip in the market.

The chip is now back on a more predictable schedule with all the previous problems having been resolved. There is always risk, of course, from this point on but we feel very good about the chip at this point. We spent many more months in the back end that we thought was going to be required and, literally, time ran out for a reasonable shot at 4th quarter volumes.

We are guiding people to expect losses in Q3 and Q4 as our revenues will stay roughly the same (maybe down 10% in Q4) but with gross margins declining significantly. Q1 and Q2, however, we believe will be very strong quarters with a return to profitability.

According to this email, it would seem 3dfx missed Q4 by only a few weeks (as I think their fiscal Q4 ends in January). The stock's already been hammered recently, wonder what'll happen tomorrow.
update by steve: KombatKing was kind enough to spot the actual email, which I replaced in the news item now.

NTGamePalace has another Voodoo3 and Banshee fix which also works with D3D now. Thanks VE

There seems to be a lot of rumbling out there that an announcement is coming some time today from 3dfx with word that the Napalm aka Voodoo4 wont be coming out this year and has been pushed to 2000. A lot of you guys probably remember this news post as well as this news post with quotes from Scott Sellers and Greg Ballard of 3dfx at SiliconInvestors. Here is part of the original quote, we'll see what turns up later today:

"We believe that there is still a chance that we can make the quarter, but each day we are getting closer to knowing the actual likelihood. We should know within a week or two whether it will make the quarter. But right now, it is substantially at risk."

NT Game Palace has word on a Glide fix for Windows2000 which will prove pretty useful for those of you trying to play the UT demo under Win2k. Thanks VE

Reverend (Reverend's Pulpit) over at VE has a bit from Tim Sweeney talking about the recently announced 3dfx texture compression technology which is a bit better than S3TC as far as I can tell. (But not much). Sweeney is all for the standard and hopes it gains widespread support.

The CGO guys have a side by side comparison of the new 3dfx texture compression technology as compared to S3TC.

From VE: Ga'ash Soffer has posted an article on anti-aliasing which is pretty educational.

Steve mentioned a little earlier about Scott Sellers' quotes on the Silicon Investor boards. Well, Patrick Grinsell also got some comments from 3dfx President/CEO Greg Ballard. He says that the problems are known and solved, but may not make Q4. Also that 3dfx hasn't been trying to fool the market, but that it's a surprise to them as well. Here's pieces of the quotes, you can go here to read the whole thing.

"I think a number of the people on the boards interpreted this to mean that we have been out spreading that word for "months" behind the back of the average retail investor. In fact, we have been making this statement for less than a week only to investors that we have talked to when they call us."

"I do think they [the problems] are resolved, although we are still assessing this, but they took much, much longer to resolve than we thought. Now the question is whether we have left ourselves enough time."

"[The problems were] Completely unanticipated and due, in large part, to the enormous complexity of this chip."

Some not so good news for those of you waiting on that Voodoo4 aka Napalm. Scott Sellers of 3dfx is quoted in an email exchange with Patrick Grinsell as follows. That is the entire quote below which is.. bad. Guess we'll know for sure in a week or two. Keep in mind this is not fully confirmed, however generally users on siliconinvestors rarely 'mess around'

"What we have been telling others in the financial community is that there is significant risk at this time that napalm will not hit the 4th quarter. We believe that there is still a chance that we can make the quarter, but each day we are getting closer to knowing the actual likelihood. We should know within a week or two whether it will make the quarter. But right now, it is substantially at risk."

3dfx is just having their day in the sun with this Unreal Tournament demo release coming out only for their cards. AnandTech has a new interview with Brian Burke and Scott Sellers of 3dfx. Here is the 3dfx take on the soon to be released GeForce from NVidia:

We give nvidia a lot of credit for being first to market with a geometry accelerator, but we do disagree with their decision to emphasize geometry over fill-rate. The reality is that the announced fill-rate for GeForce is not going to allow it to remain competitive with our next generation products for games which run at high resolution and high color depth. While every new 3D product cycle gamers have been able to increase the resolution and pixel depth with which they enjoy their games, nvidia appears to have made no substantial improvements in being able to run games at high resolution and 32bpp color. In contrast, we have listened to our customers and have focused on delivering a compelling gaming experience at 1024x768 and beyond resolution in 32bpp color

It looks like the 3dfxgamers.com page has finally opened up for business. They are pretty darn happy about the Unreal Tournament demo coming out on the 3dfx platform first too. Check out the page with some new shots of UT.

A few more followups on that 3dfx announcement. Check out the coverage on SharkyExtreme, FiringSquad, and EuroGamers