Le Trong Nguyen, Assitant VP of Graphics Marketing for Trident, was at Meltdown and he took umbrage with our review of the Blade XP from Computex.

Computex 2001 Exclusive: New Graphics Chips from SiS and Trident

As he told us, while pointing out the demos running at Meltdown, "This isn't ho-hum graphics. We're shipping two million chips before the end of this year."

Le Trong Nguyen of Trident looks on adoringly at Blade XP demo. Actually, it wasn't too bad. Good enough is good enough.

Mr. Nguyen raises a good point. We have to be careful sometimes to separate our need for speed from the realities of the industry. Trident is a public graphics chip company, and although not a stellar performer, the company has done well by focusing on the category of add-in cards that retail for under $40.

As Mr. Nguyen pointed out, Blade XP is the only DirectX 7 core logic graphics chipset, something that even Intel doesn't have. He also pointed out that Trident's business in the mobile segment is up.

At the end of the day, for a graphics board that costs under $40, and for the motherboard that requires a good enough 3D solution with low power consumption, Trident's Blade XP does the job. Someone's making money in this segment, and not everyone wants the latest and greatest technology. So, I'm glad we gave Mr. Nguyen his chance at a rebuttal.