wouldn't be hypocrite if amd just had said "we DONT support in any way that decision"?

of course they're happy

giving discount to manufacturers should be allowed but payoffs for delaying or canceling AMD products is downright dirty...

i'm not a fan of AMD products, Intel/Nvidia user myself, but Intel SHOULD pay the fine for what they did to European market...

Why wouldn't they be anytime your competition takes a blow is a good time for you.

Fixed.

This would only benefit AMD if Intel was forced to pay a royalty for every processor sold through their "rebates".

we wish for good am3 processors for the future , 800 series chipsets and the next gen of radeon cards . with ddr3 premium falling steadily , should give a solid offering hopefully at good value too .

"AMD Responds to Intel Fine; Likes it a Lot"

Thanks for taking the time to write this article and point out the obvious.

Intel's procs are way way way too expensive. I use only Intel but I wish they had prices like AMD. And I'm sure most Intel users feel the same way. Maybe this SMALL chunk of money will help them start making the right decisions and hold the consumer in their better interests. But that's not at all whats really going to happen. Greed greed greed.

Wow, I was so sure that AMD would be upset with the rulling. Thank you Tomshardware for clearing that up for me.

while "offering rebates to manufacturers who agreed to obtain the majority of their processors from Intel" might be debatable of weather is right or wrong, "paying manufacturers to either delay or cancel the launch of AMD-based products" is plain wrong and they should pay dearly for it.

I am really disappointed with the way intel tried to keep AMD out of the game,offering rebates in one thing,but paying OEM's to keep or delay AMD products is very "mafia" like and affects the consumers the most,i think intel owes every consumer an apology especially those who actually buy their overpriced products despite intel's stupid pricing.

To sad AMD states nothing about how they will use this ruling in their various fights with Intel.

The companies that took the payoffs and rebates are just as much at fault and should be held accountable as well.

The decision for Intel to appeal or pay the fine will cost them a decent chunk of change. This hurts profitability, and thus both shareholder returns and their credit (in a time where every company needs to hold onto every bit they can).

Also, I believe the cost to Intel's reputation would be great (hence the appeal). After all, outselling the competition and having superior products sounds great - but doing so because you had to pay your customers to not use or delay use of your competitor's product sounds like you knew they had a decent product.

True, it might be nice for AMD to see an infusion of cash for this, but how do you prove the potential lost income for a market that your company wasn't allowed to participate in?

Myself, if I were AMD, I'd just go after perpetual rights to the x86 architecture for whomever fabricates their chips. No direct cost to Intel, only a cost of future income.

Haha.

Unless end users see any benefit from this, then this ruling has no meaning whatsoever. Oh sure Intel loses a little reputation and a little bit of money, and the EU feels like they did something right.

The truth is, we as customers will probably not see any benefits from this at all.

Ahh..duhhh..that's a no brainer

Hey we wanted to post an article with AMD's response, in the interest of telling the complete story. That said, I realised it was a pretty obvious response from AMD, so I figured this title reflected that. Would you rather we posted no follow up comment from AMD at all?

I just bought an AMD laptop, mostly because it was cheap, but partially because I wanted to support an abused underdog. Stop overcharging Intel!

We as consumers may be the ones harmed in this...

That's $1.45 billion less to go into research and development.
With less R&D, me may as well go back to 10MHz CPUs.

Intel CPUs cost more because they are worth more. They simply produce better chips, and if you want to buy a better product you have to pay more than what you would for an inferior product. So what exactly is so wrong with their pricing? i7, the cheapest one, is pretty damn cheap for its performance, and AMD can't even compare to them. This fine will only harm the speed at which Intel can improve their tech (and Intel is the much more innovative than AMD), which would benefit us all, just to do what? support a shitty company like AMD with terrible products? What a waste.

Way to state the obvious ... rival loves it, accused company wants to appeal ... duh!

Seriously, Intel CPUs cost more because they are worth more than AMD's chips. Intel simply has superior technology, and the amount the cheapest i7 is worth, is much lower than anything comparable that would ever come from the AMD side, but AMD doesn't even have a chip to compete with i7.

So what exactly is the benefit of finning Intel, why should we support an non-innovative, old, unoriginal, and worthless company like AMD? AMD has never made a good product.

Hopefully AMD follows up and sues for their 15%. They've come out with some great products lately, imagine what kind of R&D they could do with the extra money.

Does AMD receive any of this fine money? They are the ones that were hurt because of Intel's action.

@ Jane
No, I'm grateful you posted their response... but maybe it would have been better if Kevin had done it, and added a little of his boarder-line inappropriate zing to it to spice it up. Or you could have simply inserted a 'vagina' somewhere in there to add more to the discussion :3

CPU+,

I disagree, AMD used to make some nice processors when they were cloning, and the K6-III was pretty good too. The K7 and later sucked, but luckily for them, Intel had a lousy design at the time too.

Really, if you look at what they did under Jerry Sanders, they had a lot of interesting processors. They were generally one generation behind Intel when they were cloning, and after the 386, but their 286s were better than Intel's, their 386s were better than Intel's, and their 486s were better than Intel's (mainly because Intel wasn't working on them anymore). So, for someone needing previous generation hardware, AMD really made some decent processors at a good price.

The K6 was a very nice processor, especially the K6-III. It wasn't as fast as the Pentium II or Pentium III, but it was a lot smaller and used a lot less power. For the size and power of the processor, it was a really strong design. The problem was with the Super 7 chipsets .

The K7 was a poor design, but was big enough it didn't matter so much. Despite coming out four years after the Pentium III, and being much larger and using much more power, it struggled with it. Luckily, the Pentium 4 sucked, and AMD was able to keep the K7 alive to this day. That's the problem, it wasn't very good to begin with, and it's now almost 10 years later and AMD is still making K7s, although they have made minor modifications to it. Maybe the Bulldozer will be good, though, they've had enough time to work on a new design, after all. It better be a new design. It's not like the P6 design which was good from the beginning, and thus was a good basis for the processors we see today. The K7 is fundamentally flawed, and they need the new processor to be fundamentally different. But, I'm hopeful they can do it.

As far as I'm aware, the money from Intel goes to the EU's central budget, which, according to the Commission, reduces the contributions that Member States pay to the EU.

...ummm? what about that town in North Carolina - Wilson? and their company Greenlight? isn't Time Warner and Embarq doing exactly the same things that the Varney/DOJ are claiming they will pursue? Or does this example not count because it is two company's teaming up together to stifle competition and paying off govt. officials to try to make competition illegal?

If AMD is really as bad as all that, Intel would have no reason to pay it's costomers to avoid them.

I think that should be - "of"