Evil Avatar asked Brian Burke of 3dfx about what they will do improve the financial position of 3dfx and secure a solid place in the future. Brian's reply isnt very specific but he does mention adding multiple venders for their product components and new product announcements later this quarter. Read the full thing here.

3dfx just annouced their results for the quarter ending July 31, 2000 and the net loss was (drumroll please) $100.5 million. Here's a piece of the press release:

This resulted in a net loss of ($100.5 million), or ($3.81) per share. This compares to a net loss of ($11.6 million) or ($0.50) per share for the quarter ended July 31, 1999.

For the six-month period ended July 31, 2000, the company reported revenues of $175.6 million as compared to $145.3 million for six month period ended July 31, 1999. Net loss for the six months ended July 31, 2000 and 1999, respectively, were ($112.9 million) or ($4.44) per share, and ($13.8 million) or ($0.71) per share.

$66.2 million of that loss was the one time expense of buying out GigaPixel. But doing the math yields that the net loss the quarter before last was only $12.4 million, so if the buyout handn't have happened, 3dfx still would have lost nearly 3x more than just a quarter previous. Also, according to some posts on the Motley Fool boards (thanks Rod), the conference call had the info that 3dfx will be selling their board manufacturing business and sub-contracting it. Also that the Voodoo5 sales were disappointing. Sounds like that STB merger was really a winner!

3dfx has just issued a press release saying they will "vigorously" defend itself against the patent infringement suit by NVidia. This is what the CEO is saying

<snip>
``NVIDIA's filing of a suit is clearly an attempt to force a settlement of our existing patent infringement lawsuit against NVIDIA, and we believe demonstrates a lack of confidence in their current defense,'' said Alex Leupp, president and CEO of 3dfx Interactive. ``We anticipate receiving rulings as to claim interpretation issues in our existing lawsuit shortly, and are committed to protecting our intellectual property and maximizing the financial benefits of our technology for our shareholders. We regret that NVIDIA feels compelled to resort to these kinds of tactics as a defense of the pending litigation. 3dfx intends to vigorously defend itself against this litigation.''

The lawsuit 3dfx is talking about is one they filed in 1998, accusing NVidia of using 3dfx's patented multitexturing technology in the Riva TNT chip.

Just when you thought the bickering between NVidia and 3dfx couldnt get any worse, NVidia has just filed a lawsuit against 3dfx claiming patent infringement and they are seeking an injunction restraining 3dfx from selling any Voodoo3/4/5 cards. Thanks Bungle for the mail.

NVIDIA's lawsuit involves five NVIDIA patents and seeks an injunction restraining 3dfx from manufacturing, selling or importing infringing graphics chip and card products including VooDoo3, Voodoo4 and Voodoo5 and VSA-100 family of products, as well as monetary damages. The lawsuit alleges that 3dfx's graphics chip and card products which are used to accelerate 3D graphics on personal computers, infringe on the following NVIDIA U.S. Patents: No: 5,687,357; No. 5,721,947; No: 5,758,182; No: 6,023,738; and No: 6,092,124.
[snip]
``This innovation is achieved through the annual investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development. We cannot allow the fruits of this investment to be misappropriated.''

For the daily hardware abuse there is an article on Tech-Junkie, where they placed an old Voodoo3 under a few thousand volts. Besides some pictures of what that looks like, there's also a movie.

3DGaming has a feature looking at the history of the 3d accelators in a somewhat funny way, and calling almost for a ban on 3dfx cards in the end because of Unreal Tournament performance.

Well I guess its never too early to start looking at new hardware eh? This bit over on 3DConcepts takes a look at the upcoming 3dfx cards using technology the scored in the gigapixel acquisition. The info is taken from a powerpoint presentation given by 3dfx a while ago showing the 'Disruptive' Gigapixel 3D technology in early stages. Amazingly the new chip is using less transistors and has a smaller die size but improved performance. A change of pace from 3dfx's recent history scaling architecture.Thanks anewman

Note that this is not the Rampage card, you can look at the early specs of that card here.

Even newer Voodoo3 2000/3000 drivers, as beta drivers 1.05.02 for Win9x are now available. There's a whole .doc file with release notes now.

3dfx has released new Win9x and Windows 2000 drivers for the Voodoo3 3500 TV AGP. These drivers are beta so use them at your own risk.

It looks like despite the performance gap in framerates, consumers love that Voodoo brand name (and FSAA I guess) as the Voodoo5 is busting some chops in the retail market. (Now they just need to turn a profit)

Malvus sent in word that some new WickedGL drivers have been released which help with support for Ritual's FAKK2 Quake3 engine game. If you have a 3dfx board give them a try.

For all the Voodoo 3 2000 or 3000 owners, 3dfx has released new Windows 2000 beta drivers. They fix an Unreal Tournament texture corruption problem, a Media Player 7 crash, as well as OpenGL screensaver problems.

Well here's a bit of a surprise. 3dfx has sent out a press release annoucing that their quarter ending results are to be delayed until the end of August. Also in the report is the new that 3dfx's revenues have plunged to $65 million. The did announce that they would have a shortfall due to a "component shortage," but this is down from $108.6 million in the previous quarter. Of course, what no one has really explained is what components 3dfx is using that nVidia isn't, especially since both of them use TSMC over in Taiwan for their chips, and nVidia hardware seems to have no problem making it to market. Glad I got rid of my stock when I did :/

Got Apex has an interview with 3dfx's Bubba Wolford. Guess what they talk about.

There is an interview with Bubba Wolford on Gibme, asking 3dfx's senior PR person about the usual stuff such as the Voodoo 5, the T-Buffer and texture compression.

GA-Hardware has a 3dfx interview with Alf Covey of the aforementioned company discussing current and future products. Hopefully FSAA made it in there a few times.

The FiringSquad has put up a new hardware feature looking at the FSAA of ATI's Radeon videocard and 3dfx's Voodoo 5.

In case you were eagerly anticipating the V5-6000 cards it looks like they are still a little ways off. [SC]Zorachus spotted this bit on the 3dfx page putting the release date as late summer/early fall now. Doh.

A new version of the WickedGL drivers has been released. If you're running a 3dfx card these are highly recommended to improve performance. Thanks Conan Ford.

An astute reader sent in this Motley Fool posting by a member of the 3dfx shareholders (One of the guys who has enough shared to attend the meetings) which gives a summary of the recent 3dfx board meeting. There is some pretty interesting info in there, but the one that caught my eye the most was this brief statement:

They (3dfx) have a product (with sony) next year that will outperform the x box.
5:15 update: It looks like sony was just an example of a possible client, oh well.

There are a few other bits, like 50% of costs for boards is memory, and the V5-6000 is looking like it will ship at the end of next month. (Last word from 3dfx was July16th, which they missed)