Oh, I cannot wait for more AMD fanboys to flame Intel a little more. It always makes me laugh to watch hypocrisy in progress.

This is not something for fanboys to fight over, it's something politicians and comporate entities have to fight over.

Intel need to be burnt for what they've done, but preferably by some other government body.

LOL, Intel fanboys supporting intel's monopolist actions. Who'd knew???

Let's use our superior market holding with inferior products to force our competitors out of business! Remember the majority of this happened during the AMD K6/K9/Athlon vs Intel Pentium 2/3/4 days.

AMD had the superior products but just couldn't penetrate the market. Imagine if they were able to get their share of the market at the time. More than likely they'll have a better processor than the Core i7's. AMD just cannot compete because they do not have the money right now.

Apparently you dont visit this site that often and read the comments on the articles relating to this debacle..

im just going to wait and see how this turns out then make a judgment on it it seems to early to me.

wwwoooo wait wait one second... ok let me get it straight, intel convinced everyone to buy their stuff, eventhough it may or may not be the best, lets assume AMD is better? ok, but assume intel markets better, assume intel offers rebates and volume discounts to pc manufactures with agreements to not sell competition as well as not lunching/delaying launching? OK so intel is to blame right? to be the one to offer deals to be under their discount wing? To be honest? No!!! I FEEL SORRY FOR AMD!!! BUT PUNISHING INTEL WILL NOT HELP AMD

for the people of europe who feel intel "cheated" them and EU is right to fine intel for better commercials and better products thats not right at all

If intel was selling snake oil i would do a 180 but show me where intel committed slander and lied.

No joke i own 4 amd systems at this very moment and have built 4 intel systems for my friends that are die hard intel fans but like mac users dont know how to mount a 775 or the newest build i did for a friend a 1366.

I am a huge AMD fan but if AMD cannot get the word out then someone needs to take their place, and the fines by the EU is not the right thing to do.

I wish AMD could get there name out, i used to work in computer retail and a year ago people would come in saying "what/who is AMD?" And now with intel commercials i could bet it is worse. I don't feel like the people who purchased intel systems should feel cheated because when they purchased it they thought it was worth the price paid.

We shoud stop flaming, no matter on which side we are.
We, the DIY consumers will never make a difference based on our purchasing option. We can go intel/amd as much as we want.

It will only matter if AMD will get a better market share by signing deals with the big players (HP, Dell etc).
If AMD would need to ramp-up production in order to satisfy demand, it would be doable (that's what investors are there for).
They could compete in the lower end of the market (think 100$ quad core cpu)!

Wow. Intel asked the EC on what basis they were condemned, they got their answer; it's quite irrefutable, and now they cry foul for getting what they wanted.

montezuma: Intel claims innocence without an explanation, and you are automatically accepting it as fact, that's called being a fanboy. There's no way to misinterpret what the EU said, either Intel is the villain here, or the EU just made all of that stuff on it, it's not a matter of spinning it one way or the other.

Honestly what was wrong with what they did. If you only sell my product I will give you a discount. What is the big deal?

It was more like "If you only sell my product, I will give you a discount. If you sell the competitors product, we will stop selling to you"

When they threaten to hurt companies "all lines of business" and threatened to lose their income because intel decides not to sell to them if they sell AMD, then that's a BIG problem.

This is laughable. First, the emails were hand-picked and not attributed or put in any context. The EU just wanted to release some unsubstantiated mails that make them look bad. Second, even if it is exactly as painted in the emails there's nothing wrong with it. Suppose I know you sell 100,000 units a year. I tell you if you buy 80000 units a year you will get a 10% discount, and if you buy 95000 units a year you will get a 15% discount. There exists no rational system (meaning excluding socialism) where this is illegal for any kind of business, no matter if they're a "monopoly". Now, turn those unit numbers into percentages. Case closed, EU tactics disclosed as irrational and ridiculous.

Regardless of who did what and who is the villain or who is the victim, I sincerely hope that the consumer wins in the end and we see better products and competition from both Intel and AMD (though I sort of root for AMD a little more!).

Intel tactics are along the same lines or bulk prices (Costco) or rebates (cell phone companies) or even grocery stores (coupons!!!) im sure there is an equal amount of 'emails/documents' that will show intel made perfectly fine practices. No large company is innocent, they do their best to make money, its a cutthroat business if you dont like it....GO TO THE EU, find yourself a nice socialist country that will subsidize everything.

Otellini and Intel Leadership should just own up to the fact that they were caught and busted. It's time for them to put on their big boy pants and take responsibility. I will ROFLMAO when they lose the appeal.

To those that assert what Intel did is the same as other rebates/discounts offered by other companies just demonstrates a lack of business acumen and fair trade practices as well as showing that they do not understand the basis of the EU lawsuit and resulting verdict. What Intel did was ILLEGAL and now they must pay for it. End of story!

I'm guessing you forgot the part where Intel offered the rebates to companies who stop using AMD products?

Keep in mind business regulations in the EU are not going to be the same as regulations (or the lack of them) here in the United States. Companies face very different rules when they go over seas. Can you imagine if Intel had this problem in China? China would be fining them for not paying the government their "fair" share of profits!

I am sorry but AMD did not have superior products, I switched up to AMD twice with the arrival of the Athlons because of the reviews and benchmarks and was burned twice. They performed better no doubt but only did so for about 6 months before both of them started to produce anomalies, probably due to overheating. I will agree that AMD is producing better chips now, but not during the early Athlon days. Intel produced a better platform, period. They may not have been the top performer, but the p4's I did own are still in use today. To me a bigger selling point then top performance is reliability, and Intel had it in spades. Call me a fanboy if you like but I choose things based on overall quality.

I mean, come on, if Intel wants to use it's monopoly status to force AMD into bankruptcy, that's their right. As a proud Intel fan, I sincerely hope that one day they are the only company making CPUs, and that they will continue to force out any other upstart companies that try to make CPUs or obtain x86 licenses.

Corporations are just like sports teams, you should pick one, root for it unconditionally, and make excuses for it's "un-sportsman-like" behavior.

/intense sarcasm

Oh and if you think these practices only apply to Intel/AMD look at Coke and Pepsi. Coke will actually lose money selling their products to major grocery stores but only if their products are displayed first and have the most shelf frontage.

I'm guessing you forgot the part where Intel offered the rebates to companies who stop using AMD products?

We call it exclusivity contracts. Nvidia used to hold a ton of them over companies like XFX EVGA Gainward(Palit) etc name brand manufactures it's why for the longest time ATI only had more obscure companies as brands.

It's just the EU see intel as taking every manufacture under their wing. Frankly i don't see the problem they act like AMD server cpus don't sell well, this is because AMD fails they can't replace intel's sheer number of processors so they can't really supply a company full time even if they wanted to. This is just intel taking advantage of just one section of the cpu industry the lower end consumer level cpu's to laptop and desktop manufactures.

There is a reason why EU continuously lag behind US and East Asia in terms of technology output.

The worse part of this whole affair is that people forget its an anti-trust issue. You can always offer quantity discounts, and that's legal. However, things change when there are only two companies in the market. If Intel is making PERCENTAGE, NOT QUANTITY, agreements with what appears to be just about every major PC manufacturer, then realistically, what kind of competition is there? It also looks like Intel is trying to keep AMD afloat by allowing some version of leeway for other companies to get the deal and use a small percentage of their product lineup for AMD products. But seriously, requiring a manufacturer to use +80% of their product? It's almost like Intel is straightup buying majority stock holdings in companies, not offering discounts. In short: quantity discounts good, percentage discounts of total sales and manufacturing bad.

ff

EU does not lag behind the US only behind EAST ASIA.

Honestly, if i were in charge of Intel, i would continue the appeal, if i lost the the appeal, i would pay the fine, and then pull every single product i make out of their market, and deny to sell to any company that manufacturers and sells pc's that may use my product in any country which the EU regulates. You want AMD, here it is, find out how great your consumer experience will be when there is only one choice.

I seriously don't understand why companies like Intel and Dell put up with the utterly absurd laws that many countries have in effect. Like the whole fiasco with $10 monitors in i wanna say Taiwan. At least the US has reasonable laws regarding things like advertised prices and monopolies.

IMO, outside of the UN, the EU is the most corrupt and socialist organization that exists in developed countries.

The best part about this fine, is if intel gets it, who does it go to? Certainly not the consumers who supposedly were "screwed" because of this, but instead to a bunch of politicians to do who knows what with.

The only party that wins if Intel loses is the EU, the consumer certainly doesn't win.

This isn't going to effect my processor buying decisions in any way what-so-ever. I am still going to buy the fastest processor for my money regardless of whether it came from Intel or AMD. As it stands, AMD is not very competitive and it isn't because of monopolistic practices on the part of Intel, it is because AMD hasn't been able to make a truly competitive chip since Athlon 64 and the X2. You would be a fool and exercising a high level of hypocrisy if you stopped buying Intel chips because of what the corrupt EU thinks about their practices.

In case you have selective memories the EU fined Microsoft a substantial amount of money nearly equal to this amount and the people of this site quickly came to Microsoft's defense. The EU and their "protection of consumers and coporations" is a humongous sham.

I don't EVER remember having trouble finding a machine with an AMD chip during 2003-2005, not at all. In fact if you go to MSNBC or another stock researching web site and check AMD's stock during the months they were supposedly being "shut out" their stock was steadily RISING to a peak of above 40 during 2006. During 2005 AMD stock rose nearly 30 points and this is supposedly during the period where Intel was issuing rebates to companies who refused to stock AMD chips. Who were they selling to???? Their stock increased by 250%+!!

... win on appeal? Hmmm... they were found guilty and then after that intel haz found evidence to base the appeal on? ... or maybe... intel starts loosing ground... the larrabee seems to be a flop... the GPU starts the winning marsh with nVidia CUDA and AMD/ATi stream... intel can not afford to lose money, but they don't have the GPU capability to gain money a said from CPU sell's... and blah-blah-blah... and what i wanted to say is... what goes around, comes around...

No, this is why you can reasonably expect more companies to practice shady business tactics in the US and Asia.

There is a MARKED difference between "volume discounts" and "rebates" and Intel's Exclusivity Contracts (read: EXTORTION). Making OEMs comply for fear of becoming uncompetitive with one-another, Intel uses their fear of each other to rip them all off. (One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring the all and in the darkness bite them.)

Good luck defending that action in front of the shareholders. "Why aren't we selling ANYTHING in Europe?"
"Oh, I decided to throw a hissy fit because the EU caught us doing bad stuff."
"And... why shouldn't we fire you and sue your moronic ass into oblivion?"

I like your firm grasp of capitalism there, sir.