Wednesday, July 16th 2008
ATI (AMD) and NVIDIA Fix Prices in the US, Class Action Slapped Against them
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:
Of course, the latest price-cut of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 200 series products doesn't seem to have been taken into account, the price spread between NVIDIA and ATI with their highest-offerings is zero.
Sources:
IT Examiner, Law.com
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.
98 Comments on ATI (AMD) and NVIDIA Fix Prices in the US, Class Action Slapped Against them
-both hug each other warmly-
I had a hitch something like this was going on.
Nvidia... is so screwed. Now watch GTX280 prices skyrocket.
If this is all true, we've all basically been getting reemed with no lube for a very long time.
There was none of this I come out with a $800 card that reigns for a year which gets eaten by a $450 card just to be trumped by a $600 card which is upgraded to a $650 card which is utterly destroyed by a $500 card.
Life sucks AMD & NV doesn't it. They would have probably never found out if the 2 idiots didn't start to fight like cats & dogs.
and isn't it normal that they try to cooperate to keep prices high? every industry trys to, even if it is illegal:rolleyes:
only thing i'm worried about is that they form more a monopole on GPU's like intel and AMD.
2 is not enought for a sector, but i won't buy any other as there's no better one?
remember the day's where you could choose between cyrix intel amd ect. ? like Ati Nvidia 3dfx.
3 and up are good, less is just bad :slap:
a mid range card comes out then another better mid range card comes out by the other
its silly i bet the whole 3000 series and 9000 series is a sham and they couldve done that to start with
i mean didnt you notice how close it was back when you had the x1000 series and the 7000 series
the whole 6 series and x800 cards were a sham too not much in it
i bet the it all started with the 9800 radeon i mean that was a pricey beast
If this doesn't go down, the G300 & R800 could very well be the same price at launch. That's when we know they are doing it again, especially when NV is keeping a track on AMD's prices. It probably happened that way at first, but continuing it for 5 yrs is unforgivable. The FXs were not worth it at all & the prices for the 2900s made me sick.
lol... just in time for intel and its larrabee.
I thought the 2900's were a bit cheap to be honest, maybe not for the performance tho. It all makes sense now. Watch these two gang up on intel.
if anyone made a product before sell 1st he made a market/price research to adjust his price and if the market can hold a 100% win (based on a similar but not identical product) i bet he wouldn't sell it with a 30% margin;people don't know the manufacturing cost for this reason
either that or one of the 3rd party companies like HiS & XFX, GeCube etc etc need to step out & start makin their own graphics cards.....
this sucks...
Both companies need to price there cards according to what they will do (& how much we will pay for them). Having them locked-in w/o that real value only leaves the customer hanging out to dry. These relatively high NV prices over the last 3 yrs may have put us out of perspective of what these things should cost.