ATI (AMD) and NVIDIA Fix Prices in the US, Class Action Slapped

[evongugg]

Class actions charged against NVIDIA and ATI (now AMD) reveal that the two companies may have staged a competition over the past half-a-decade or so. A judge read out an email which suggested price fixing was rife in the graphics card market. That follows a class action of 51 different plaintiffs, now combined into one, and across different legal jurisdictions, alleging cartel behaviour not only in graphics chips, but flat panels and CRTs too.

In other words, NVIDIA and ATI may have been fixing prices of their products for a while now, it is believed that they held secret meetings to discuss staged competition, chart out prices, timings of product launches among other things. These pseudo-competitions staged provided improved sales among other things. A PDF File available to us at this point shows that the two indulged in conspiracy to mutually benefit from staged competition, so as to:

Fix, stabilize, and maintain prices of products in the US Market.
Artificial inflation of product prices.

Of course, the latest price-cut of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 200 series products doesn't seem to have been taken into account since the price spread between NVIDIA and ATI with their highest-offerings is zero.

http://www.techpowerup.com/65970/ATI_(AMD)_and_NVIDIA_Fix_Prices_in_the_US_Class_Action_Slapped_Against_them.html

 

[jeb1517]

So two companies figured out a way to make more money...why is this a crime? Isn't that the whole point of running a business? It's your choice to pay $600+ for a product. Might as well include game developers in the lawsuit also. As long as the company doesn't hold a gun to your head, I don't see what's wrong.

 

[zenmaster]

So two companies figured out a way to make more money...why is this a crime? Isn't that the whole point of running a business? It's your choice to pay $600+ for a product. Might as well include game developers in the lawsuit also. As long as the company doesn't hold a gun to your head, I don't see what's wrong.

What is "wrong" is that it is illegal.
Even if I think something should be legal, if it's not it is still illegal.

Much like I think Fanboys should be locked up in a City Zoo for the amusement of others, if I so detained a fanboy, I would need to accept the consquences.

And if the story is true, so will the companies above.
Neither people or companies are free to ignore laws they do not agree with.

The Great Civil Rights leaders in the 60s willing went to jail for the "crimes" they commited and accepted the punishments. They then used that legal system to get the unjust crimes removed from the books.

Perhaps that was the goal of ATI an NVIDIA

 

[Craxbax]

So two companies figured out a way to make more money...why is this a crime? Isn't that the whole point of running a business? It's your choice to pay $600+ for a product. Might as well include game developers in the lawsuit also. As long as the company doesn't hold a gun to your head, I don't see what's wrong.

That is clearly apparent... are you a product of the US public school system? LOL

 

[OrderChaos]

Basically this is saying we have spent lots of money over the past years on items that should have been cheaper. Oh well, as long as they continue to make good products that I can afford (yay price cuts on gtx 200 series!!) then I don't really care.

 

[OrderChaos]

hmm...this really sucks for nvidia, they are being sued by Rambus at the same time. Wow. Two legal battles to fight. Well they got themselves into it, they can get themselves out.

 

[radnor]

That doesn't seem like a huge news.
Like now there is different price for different categories. If it is a simulated competition, its very well simulated.
I dont think they tried to make a GPU "Cartel". But hey defining the pricing and the category.

Lemme think what industries categorize and determine their prices, huummm:

Companies that sell or produce:

Gasoline/Diesel
Bread
Distribution
Water
Sodas
Whiskey Industry.
Wine Industry.
Tourism Industry.
.
.
.
Ad nauseam.

Pricing is definided by the industry or market forces(demand/supply) and usually categorized. If they fine ATI&NIVIDIA for it....well...they got the world to sue mates. Its all part of healthy competition and live and let live.

 

[maximiza]

Phony competetors pretending they are tring to out do each other and then getting together and having a price fixing party after hours is illegal. I am sure they would run out any third party tring to make VGA cards to protect the phony markups. Because there are no other third party companies in the graphics market I make this even more belivable. Radnor nailed it on the head. Competetors will have trade associations where they are all members and work together "unofficial". It really is fraud. It time for term limits in Congress so the bribes become a little more difficult to distrubute and this stuff stops.

 

[njalterio]

That is clearly apparent... are you a product of the US public school system? LOL

Are you the product of some arrogant, pretentious prep school?

I am getting tired of these kinds of comments. The whole point of these kinds of forums is open discussion, not to get blasted for not understanding something. jeb1517 asked a legitimate question. You don't need to berate him for it.

 

[njalterio]

Price fixing is indeed illegal.

However, I am not sure if AMD and Nvidia are guilty of this. Afterall, prices have been steadily decreasing over the years. The symptom of price fixing is increased prices.

The article makes some very good points, but there are still a lot of questions. Why the whole DX 10.1 issue? PhysX? CUDA?

I wonder who the 51 plaintiffs are.....

If the allegations are true, then I am sure the fanboys will feel foolish!

 

[nottheking]

This does seem a tad laughable to me... Clearly, there's strong evidence AGAINST there being any sort of cartel behavior. One fine example would be the Radoen HD 4800 series and the GeForce GTX 200 series. Were there a cartel, AMD would've pegged their prices UPWARDS rather than releasing their most powerful GPU at $300US. Having a $200US price slash a couple weeks out of the gate is a pretty strong sign of brutal competition, NOT cartel deals. I can think of a few cases in the past where similar, though not as severe, things happened as well.

 

[Slobogob]

I wonder who the 51 plaintiffs are.....

Yeah really......

Matrox, S3, Ageia...........Intel?......

Ageia? Why Ageia?

 

[frostys]

Ageia? Why Ageia?

aren't they owned by nvidia now anyway?

 

[dirtmountain]

Class action lawsuits = huge $$$$$$$$$$ for the shysters and a $20 rebate coupon to the people involved. If anything should be illegal it's the money the lawyers scam out of the system.

 

[NuclearShadow]

Reminds me of Deus Ex 2 when you learn the 2 giant competing coffee shops are really the same company :lol:

Of course I think we should wait and learn the facts before we assume anything is really happening between the two.

 

[njalterio]

Class action lawsuits = huge $$$$$$$$$$ for the shysters and a $20 rebate coupon to the people involved. If anything should be illegal it's the money the lawyers scam out of the system.

I completely agree. Tort law use to have it's place, but now I think it is getting out of hand.

 

[cjl]

Basically this is saying we have spent lots of money over the past years on items that should have been cheaper.

Cheaper? Look at the prices of cpu's compared to the prices of VGA cards and you will see that VGA cards should be MUCH more expensive compared to the prices of cpu's. VGA cards now have hundreds of stream processors, Gigabytes of memory, 10's of millions of transisters, lots of silicone, expensive cooling solutions, etc, yet the prices are still very cheap compared to cpu's which only have one/two/three/four processors, very little memory, and not nearly as many transitors and certainly MUCH less silicon. If VGA cards were any cheaper, the comapanies making video cards would go out of business.

What you're ignoring is the fact that Intel has their own fabs to pay for, and is constantly pushing and updating their process technology (which costs money). In addition, the 4 cores in a quad core CPU are vastly more complex and more difficult to make than the stream processors in a GPU. The design process behind the CPU is easily as difficult as the design process behind a GPU, and that costs money too. You can't just look and say "Hey - that GPU has 800 cores and the CPU has 4 - clearly it should be 200 times more expensive"

In addition, by transistor count, current 45nm Cores are at 410 million for a dual, 820 million for a quad. The RV770 is at 956 million right now, with GT200 at 1.4 billion. This is hardly the transistor differential you seem to want to imply, and when Nehalem arrives, with 731 million transistors on one die, it'll be fairly close to the HD4 series.

 

[wrazor]

LOL Mrs.bytch. This is your second post in exactly same words. Well if Intel is so evil to sell thier CPUs so costlier than GPUs, why is AMD not selling thier Phenoms for 50$?? Seeing thier performance is so inferior to Intels quads and they are chep to make as you say?? Surely AMD is more evil than Intel then?? A BIG BIG ROFL

 

[takealready]

Business is all about making money.

Some companies don't care how they make it..as long as they make it.

I personally can't stand either company right now , there all full of hot-dog crap. For Nvidia to release a card for $500+ AND FOR SOMEONE TO SPEND THAT MUCH ON JUST 1 CARD. Just allows them to continue these retarded tactics. If we all didn't buy not 1 card (for a month), that would force them to start chopping prices.

Now the PR people of each company and the lawyers are getting together a "story" about how the accusations aren't true. Well if they aren't true why have all the cards released from both companies been no more then a 25% difference in performance, and released on after the other (like a game of "tag-your-it").

 

[jeb1517]

Business is all about making money.

Some companies don't care how they make it..as long as they make it.

I personally can't stand either company right now , there all full of hot-dog crap. For Nvidia to release a card for $500+ AND FOR SOMEONE TO SPEND THAT MUCH ON JUST 1 CARD. Just allows them to continue these retarded tactics. If we all didn't buy not 1 card (for a month), that would force them to start chopping prices.

That's exactly my point. If I have a product that I could sell for $200 but I know people would still buy it at $500, I would be an idiot to sell it at $200. Now let's say someone else sold the same thing for cheaper. I would tell them, hey, you can make alot more money if you sell for $450. That's basically what they did. I understand it's "illegal" but that doesn't mean that it's wrong.

 

[Guest]

The reason it is illegal is because basically you have (2) companies that manufacture over 90% of cards in a particular market. Now if they are cooperating like this, it is essentially like having (1) companies pricing for (2) sets of cards. This would be considered a monopoly and anti-competitive. That's why its illegal.

And yes, its a damn shame some law firm is going to get 20 million out of this and the consumer will get a check for 10 bucks. I agree, that should be at least regulated somehow.

 

[Slobogob]

aren't they owned by nvidia now anyway?

Exactly. That would be like ATI sueing AMD. It just does not make any sense.

 

[jeb1517]

That is clearly apparent... are you a product of the US public school system? LOL

LOL OMG ROFLCOPTER! Are you one of the tools that got suckered into actually paying $600 for a video card? LOL!

 

[FrozenGpu]

LOL OMG ROFLCOPTER! Are you one of the tools that got suckered into actually paying $600 for a video card? LOL!

jeb that's not the point he was trying to make, price fixing is always wrong, Companies are not allowed to go behind the consumers back in secret meetings and fix prices before market conditions have had their say...

 

[copasetic]

The only way you're gonna keep companies from doing something illegal is to attach a hefty percentage-based fine. It's pretty sad when doing the illegal thing makes you more money than you have to pay when you get caught.

Same story with pollution, it costs more to dispose of waste properly than it does to just dump it in a river and take a $10,000 fine every now and then. Turn each fine into 5% of their revenue and they'll think twice.