AMD wants us to breakfree

[cherie22984]

http://breakfree.amd.com/en-us/default.aspx
This comes in just in time, I just upgraded from an AMD 4800 Toledo to a Q6600(B3).
Here is a letter from Hector.
Light your torches!!


On July 26, 2007, following an exhaustive five-year investigation, the European Commission filed a Statement of Objections formally charging Intel with breaking the law by abusing its monopoly power over the global market for microprocessors.*

The EC explained that “the actions of Intel are bad news for competition and consumers,” ** charging that Intel has:

* Maintained its monopoly by paying substantial rebates to PC manufacturers on the condition that they do little or no business with AMD,
* Paid manufacturers to delay or cancel the launch of AMD-based products, and,
* Provided below-cost microprocessors for servers to prevent rival solutions from being chosen by strategic customers.

In short — Intel is paying and pressuring computer manufacturers to boycott AMD.

This is not an isolated incident. The EC’s charges are similar to conclusions of the Japan Fair Trade Commission in 2005 and reflect conduct that Korea’s antitrust body is also investigating. In the United States and Japan, private litigation is focusing on the same pattern of abuse.

Of course, the framers of antitrust laws don’t care whether this or that company succeeds in the marketplace. That’s the way it should be. The essential purpose of antitrust laws is to tear down artificial blockades to competition, and to promote efficient economic productivity and the welfare of consumers.

So last week’s action by the European Commission was not about one company “winning” or “losing.” It’s simply this — a big step forward, by an expert antitrust enforcement authority, to a world in which customers come first, innovation comes often, and consumers come to know that they are free to choose.

We welcome the opportunity to compete for the business of computer OEMs and consumers around the world in such a fair and open marketplace.

Hector Ruiz

Hector Ruiz
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Advanced Micro Devices

 

[BtK]

Sounds to me like AMD is getting pretty desperate. They're getting owned on the market and are grabbing for any thing they can to downplay Intel's success.

* Provided below-cost microprocessors for servers to prevent rival solutions from being chosen by strategic customers.

I dont understand this. If I had a buisness and were competing with another buisness in the same market, I'd try almost any thing I could (legally) to get people to buy my product.

 

[blashyrkh]

@BTK (by the way if you got your nick from the serial killer, that's sick dude)
THat's the whole point mate!!!! INTEL is NOT acting in a legal maner!! They're trying to pay their way through the competion although they have better products!! That's just greedy man! Besides, without competition Intel would be able to charge whatever they want and also the drive for innovation would be much smaller.
Just think about it.

 

[Reynod]

I hope justice prevails and Intel has to payup.

The proceeds could wipe AMD's debt completely.

The evidence is overwhelming.

The damages bill is probably going to be between 2 to 10 Billion? Is that correct?

The ATI aquisition could actually end up being a freebee !!!

Go Barcelona !!

Stick that up your nose Ottelini ...You won't be CEO much longer.

I imagine this is the main reason Intel is desperately trying to push AMD to the wall ... how many successive price cuts has Intel made now??

 

[paladin13]

How many years did the Athlon 64's and Athlon X2's exist in the market without Core2?

During that time, Intel managed to continue selling those crap CPU's

How did they manage that?

The above statement reveals how!
Time to pay!

 

[cherie22984]

Just look at Nvidia now. They are pretty much charging whatever they want for their GPUs. They dont have much competition, so they think its okay for them to charge insane amounts of money for their Ultra cards. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130093

Greed!

That is true. Intel managed to sell the netburst chips through all the oems. They were getting nasty "rebates" to not sell the AMD chips, just plain wrong. I remember wanting to get a PC with a AMD and it was very hard to find the one I wanted. They were pushing the Intel chips hard, making it hard for me to find the one PC I wanted. Thats how I dumped HP and went for my own system build.

 

[speedbird]

I am sticking with AMD that's for sure! K10 will be my next upgrade.

 

[papi4baby]

That is true. Intel managed to sell the netburst chips through all the oems. They were getting nasty "rebates" to not sell the AMD chips, just plain wrong. I remember wanting to get a PC with a AMD and it was very hard to find the one I wanted. They were pushing the Intel chips hard, making it hard for me to find the one PC I wanted. Thats how I dumped HP and went for my own system build.

Wow your makind and excuse for your own ignorance

P.S. Keep at it comunist, if i have the money and i want something and all it takes is money, you bet your *** i'll pay, that's what Intel did! Or did they, where's this mountain of proof

 

[Dahak]

I've always enjoyed using AMD processors,and I encourage all my clients that want a new computer,to go with AMD.So far AMD has not let me down.And every client with an AMD system,is quite content.But it just goes to show you how even people with billions of dollars at their disposal,can be as ruthless as they are.Simply put,THE CONSUMER HAS THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE what manufacturer it uses.Be it INTEL,AMD,IBM......What INTEL is doing is fighting dirty.Can't beat them in a fair fight,and can't stand to lose.So they use the oldest trick in the book.They pay people off.C'mon INTEL,where is your HONOR???Your INTEGRETY???INTEL,you're PATHETIC.

Dahak

 

[hacker91]

All i have to say is this...DID Intel come to your house and put a gun to your head and say buy our product... If you bought an intel during that time frame its because 1 you wanted it or 2 you didnt shop around for an AMD. In texas where i live its a bitch going to a local comp shop and even getting them to HAVE an Intel in stock. Thats today even with the Core 2 around.. Back in Netburst days it was impossible to even get them to order one. To me THATS Antitrust. When the consumer has to go a long way out of thier way to get something they want because the locals are PUSHING something else. I see all of this as business as usual. I work in a service business and yes we talk down our competition because if you want to survive thats what ya gotta do from time to time. It might not be morally right but they are doing the same thing to you.

 

[amuehl1]

hacker91 ,were you shopping around for a Netburst back in the day? Was it for customers, or yourself?

... I work in a service business and yes we talk down our competition because if you want to survive thats what ya gotta do from time to time. It might not be morally right but they are doing the same thing to you.

Anyone that's wondering why Corporate America has made America a soul-less, self-centered, material nation, there it is. So paranoid that the competition is bad-mouthing you, you'd better beat them to it. Screw the customers, as long as the billion dollar corporation's stock goes up.

Legal, healthy corporate competition is great. When you can let the quality of your product be the driving factor in your sales, I have no problem with that. Intel has a great architecture out right now, but in Netburst days, it appears that they employed immoral tactics in peddling their space-heaters to maintain market share against their rival (who had a better product). Intel knows the majority of Americans are going to get a Dell or HP (not shop for components and build it themselves), and exploited that by telling pc manufacturers to not use AMD. If it was only that they offered lower prices, that would be butta'. However, once they say, "don't use company A or B, and we'll give you incentive" that's were I think the problem is. As consumers this should piss you off. A company making the decision for you before you have the choices, is b.s.

 

[xrodney]

All i have to say is this...DID Intel come to your house and put a gun to your head and say buy our product... If you bought an intel during that time frame its because 1 you wanted it or 2 you didnt shop around for an AMD. In texas where i live its a bitch going to a local comp shop and even getting them to HAVE an Intel in stock. Thats today even with the Core 2 around.. Back in Netburst days it was impossible to even get them to order one. To me THATS Antitrust. When the consumer has to go a long way out of thier way to get something they want because the locals are PUSHING something else. I see all of this as business as usual. I work in a service business and yes we talk down our competition because if you want to survive thats what ya gotta do from time to time. It might not be morally right but they are doing the same thing to you.

You are mising most important points. It doesnt matter if some small shops or fans build their own systems with AMD (ofcourse i did and over 80% was AMD). Most of computer systems are build and sold by big companies like Dell, compaq, HP etc. There is majority of peaple who dont understand computers enough to build their own rigs or who just buy PCs from big companies becouse they saw them on TV.
I am not just funboy of AMD, I used both systems, but AMD have still technological advantage over intel even when overal performance is litle lower but its still impresive 90nm chips can almost keep up with 45nm especialy in temperature and power consumption.
I was thinking if go to Qcore from intel, but barcelona is going to have more features i want so i keep waiting.
And if some company use dirty tricks over smaler one i am even less likely to buy their products even when they could be momentaly superior in performance. And its not just some false acusations over intel, because its not 1st time intel is acused such thing and he was already find guilty at least once. Ans as someon already said AMD had great advantage in last 2-3 years and there was lots of sells in small shops or online, but almost none by big system makers especialy here in europe and its highly unlikely they dont make AMD systems if about 40% market is asking for it if there was not some secret deals with intel. I am just glad at least some big companies like IBM didnt get into those deals and did sell both and it was reason vhy AMD got so high into server market.

 

[AnGeLuS7]

Sounds to me like AMD is getting pretty desperate. They're getting owned on the market and are grabbing for any thing they can to downplay Intel's success.

* Provided below-cost microprocessors for servers to prevent rival solutions from being chosen by strategic customers.

I dont understand this. If I had a buisness and were competing with another buisness in the same market, I'd try almost any thing I could (legally) to get people to buy my product.

The real question is whether or not the consumer was hurt...

 

[papi4baby]

SO EVERYONE IS QUICK TO BLAME INTEL. Lets not forget people the OEM's were the ones to actually make the call, Intel might have said, if you scratch my back and i'll scratch yours. Im pretty sure they didn't kipnap anyone to force the OEM's to carry only their product. You know how everything is fair in love and war? Well this is war in the corporate level, quit crying over it and get over.

 

[firetatoo]

Intel is Nike
Intel is Halliburton
Intel needs competition.

 

[Heyyou27]

As much as I hate AMD's constant crying foul to Intel, I'm almost hopeful AMD is able to get some money out of this suit, because they've proven they can't get it anywhere else.

 

[r0ck]

Intel is evil, the horror, $266 quads!

 

[BaronMatrix]

Well, at least some people here are willing to admit the "appearance of impropriety." The evidence is all over. The Opteron launch was torpedoed. There was a time when the mighty ASUS wouldn't even put their name on an AMD mobo for fear of Intel.

I used ti use Intel but the overwhelming amount of FUD was too much. I mean people were shooting down the 3GHz Phenom demo and The Inq was forced to reply with pictures.

They're just two companies not the Second Coming. They should co-exist as IBM wanted. PERIOD!!!!

 

[amuehl1]

rOck, good point. But imagine without AMD...$650-$800?...

 

[erloas]

While we are at it, we need to sue Coke for anti-trust too, because they do many of the same things. We can probably get Pepsi for it too. I don't know how many restaurants I've went in where they only sell one type or the other and as a consumer I don't have a choice as to which company I get my pop from.
Sure if I go to the grocery store I can get whatever type of soda I want but not at other places. I had the same limitations at school and at work and at the ball park. I know when our town built a new high school Coke came in and bought us some score boards and a few other things and said we could only sell coke in the new school. The same thing happens with most advertising and merchandise in concert venues and stadiums and many other places. In every case the company pays more for the exclusive rights to the area then they would to purchase normal ad banners and they wouldn’t normally pay anything at all to have their goods on sale in someplace.
This sounds very similar to what is the cornerstone to the anti-trust lawsuit against Intel.

Take the auto industry. Cummins makes great diesel engines, arguably the best in the truck industry. And they worked out a deal with Dodge where Dodge was the only company that could sell trucks with the Cummins engine in it. If you wanted a Dodge with a different diesel engine you were out of luck, if you wanted a Chevy with a Cummins engine you were also out of luck.
Then there is the last step in the auto industry, the dealerships. There are some dealerships that will sell multiple types of cars but there are lots and lots of dealerships that only carry one type of car. In many cases the dealerships don’t have a choice, if they want to get good prices on their cars they can only sell cars from a single company. It is for several reasons, some are deals with the manufacturers, some just because they don’t have enough volume to sell cars from several manufacturers at once, and some because they can’t get certified to do manufacturer warranty repairs unless they do special training through the manufacturers and only exclusively sell cars from that one manufacturer.
Most dealership are independently owned, or at very least owned by big companies that are not the manufacturers. The majority of manufacturers don’t have their own dealership and the ones that do are few and far between.

Now apply that to the computer industry and you are in the same situation. The manufacturers and retailers also make deals where they will only work with one processor.

Many of the smaller computer retailers probably use only one brand of HD, and probably only one brand of RAM. Chances are the main reason the big companies would use several different manufacturer is because they sell enough that a single manufacturer couldn’t keep up with demand. Of course no one would notice is Dell only used Samsung drives and Micron RAM because that’s not the sort of thing that is usually printed anywhere.

Then there is also the case of markets of scale and the more you buy the less you pay for each. So if you were going to sell 500k PCs in a year you could either get 500k processors from one company for maybe 25% off, or you could get 250k processors from 2 different manufactures for maybe 15% off. Which one is going to cost them less? Then you add in that many of the manufacturers also get their motherboards from Intel and that same 500k PCs you sell you get to either buy 1M parts from one manufacturer, or 500k from one, 250k from another and 250k again from a 3rd.


Now lets go back to the P4 era when AMD had the better processors. AMD’s processors were much better then Intel’s for many things like gaming. Of course when enthusiasts look at benchmarking that the most important aspect and it was obvious AMD was better. But Intel was actually better in some applications because Intel focused on some multimedia extensions where as AMD focused on FP calculations. AMD was better for some tasks but not all tasks, so depending what you wanted to do AMD wasn’t always the superior choice.
Add in the consumer now, which generally speaking doesn’t know much of anything, they know a name or two and that’s about it. So if a general consumer that doesn’t know much about what he is getting he doesn’t know that AMD is better in gaming, and even if he did he doesn’t game much so it’s not much of an issue. The consumer probably doesn’t even know who AMD is, but Intel they know about, Intel has been around a while. They know the name Pentium since Intel had been spending a lot of money marketing it for years. The only way they would even know a Pentium 4 was better then a Pentium 1 was that 4 is better then 1. Then you also have the GHz race, where people know a bigger number is better and that’s it, they don’t know that a 2GHz Athalon is faster then a 2.4GHz P4. You present an uninformed consumer with something they don’t know about and they will pick the name they know the best and the number that is biggest. (my roommate just yesterday demonstrated to me he still believes GHz is the only way to tell which processor is better)
General consumers are still asking for P4s because it’s the only thing they even know to ask for. So of course the retailers present them with what they want.

It’s just a case of having the best performance doesn’t mean anything when your consumer doesn’t know how to tell you have the best performance or even who you are.

 

[Hatman]

What a load of rubbish that was, people gota scroll all the way past that now!

Facts are facts intel has obviously broken the law or this would of been over ages ago.

I think if they should be punished and AMD should be presented with some money from Intel as compensation, I dont care who sais "they whine they whine". Intel shouldnt have done it!

PS. I am not a fanboy I am buying Q6600 but the truth is just that, they did wrong.

 

[rethdog]

Some people really need to learn about fair competition - and what a great thing it's for customer and ultimately the companies that take part in it!

I only wish the legal system in the US would follow Europe & Japan, maybe AMD's plan is so much overwhelming evidence that a public outcry will happen against the democrats (house) if they don't take action.

Now apply that to the computer industry and you are in the same situation. The manufacturers and retailers also make deals where they will only work with one processor.

I think you are missing the point, it's not that computer manufacturers didn't want to work with AMD they did, it's just that there only major supplier 'Intel' took away all there rebate incentives, threatened there supply, and made there business relationship generally unworkable if they even attempted to do this. Allegedly (although 90% proven if your are in Europe)

 

[bfellow]

Just look at Nvidia now. They are pretty much charging whatever they want for their GPUs. They dont have much competition, so they think its okay for them to charge insane amounts of money for their Ultra cards. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130093

Greed!

Nvidia pretty much won out every area high-end, mid-range, and cookie-cutter markets because AMD/ATI was so late to the competition and won huge amount of market share because no card = no money = no market share.

Anyway, Nvidia and AMD are both on very friendly terms.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

Ive heard lots of people downing the Barcelona "benchmarks". Now theyre just rumors, no third party, etc, BUT those same people or alot of them, are defending Intel, going from "Its all lies" to now, hey this is business baby FUD. These things keep cropping up all over the world, and people change their minds from, its not real to well its just business as usual shows a fanboism that only deserves 1000$ cpus. If youre that stupid to defend this action, and choose to have no competition, then pay up, just dont drag me and others into that $1000 cpu area with you

 

[mordenkhai]

I have personally always wondered how the Coke/Pepsi business with restaurants worked. I hate that they always only have one or the other. I wonder how exclusive they have to be in order for the supply to be there.