TheMailMan78I know, I know........:shadedshu

FordGT90ConceptThe only computer brand I know of that was exclusive to Intel was Dell. Compaq, HP, and Gateway offered AMDs. That was over 50% of the market share up until 2005/2006. If anything, the EU should be suing Dell, not Intel. Dell said that did not offer AMDs because the customers didn't demand AMDs. Once Dell purchased Alienware (when FX-57 was all the rage), they had a paradigm shift and a reason to offer AMDs.


It reminds me of how Seagate got sued for Microsoft's mistake. Seagate labeled their drives properly as GB but Microsoft labeled hard drive capacity improperly by calculating for GiB but displaying GB. Seagate lost the class action suit. They weren't to blame at all for Microsoft's mistake. Now, whenever "GB" is used, the packaging says "1 GB = 1 billion bytes" so that they (I quoted a Verbatim DVD+R DL cakebox there), too, don't get sued for Microsoft's mistake.

.....In order to address this confusion, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has been promoting the use of the term gibibyte for the binary definition. This position is endorsed by other standards organizations including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) but has seen limited acceptance.

FordGT90ConceptGiga- means 1 billion (1,000,000,000) just as mega- means 1 million (1,000,000).
Gibi- means 2^30 (1,073,741,824) just as mebi- means 2^20 (1,048,576).

Prior to ~2002, giga- was used to describe gibi- (incorrectly). The -bi- prefix was introduced and standardized to make it known that gibi- is not equal to giga-. Microsoft has not adapted this but pretty much the rest of the industry has. If not outright adopting it, clarify what "GB" is used.

Seagate has always labeled their drives correctly. When you buy a 500 GB drive, you literally get at least 500 billion bytes. Microsoft labels it incorrectly saying 500 GB is 465 GB. That is an inequality unless you clarify 465 is actually GiB which makes it an equality.


Seagate has never been misleading, Microsoft was (still is). At bare minimum, Microsoft needs to put a "1 GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes) notice on their hard drive properties page.


Metal platters as well as optical mediums and networking equipment aren't constrainted to bits like physical transistors are in a memory. That is, the data in a given segment may not always satisfy this equation:

bits % 8 = 0

This is why they use base 10 instead of base 2--base 2 is irrelevant to those applications and base 10 is the defacto numbering system world-wide.


SSDs and Flash memory sticks do have transistors like their other memory counterparts where base 2 is relevant. They should be labeled as GiB just like RAM and cache memory.



Drives can be formatted using multiple formating standards. The capcity for one type of format won't necessarily equal the size of another format. Raw size is a good, universal standard.

TheMailMan78Getting a little dramatic are we? Genocide? Really? The fine is going to the EU's "budget". This is nothing more than a payday and has nothing to do with justice.

FordGT90ConceptYou mean Intel is paying illegitimate loans made by the USA government? I'd rather sentence the politicians to a lifetime of hard labor and give Intel their money back. Intel isn't at fault. :laugh:


Oh right, Intel is being fined because AMD didn't move product. All the same I suppose. :rolleyes:

FordGT90ConceptYou mean Intel is paying illegitimate loans made by the USA government? I'd rather sentence the politicians to a lifetime of hard labor and give Intel their money back. Intel isn't at fault. :laugh:


Oh right, Intel is being fined because AMD didn't move product. All the same I suppose. :rolleyes:

Wile EAnd that's pretty much how I feel about it.

Wile EI don't care how anyone tries to justify the fine. To me, what they did, while maybe not the most ethical, should not have been illegal. Not paying as much money for the product, is not the same as getting paid to buy the product, like you are insinuating.

How hard is to understand that I think the entire case is bullshit, and completely unjustified? It doesn't matter how many times you, or anyone else tries to explain it. When I think the entire thing is a farce to gain money out of a huge corporation, rehashing the same arguments over and over is not going to convince me. It will take new facts, not another interpretation of what's already been posted.

FordGT90ConceptRebate = partial manufacturer refund

That is, the product is being sold at a value higher than the actual cost to bring it to you. For those that care, they can get some of that income back from the manufacturer. For some it is an incentive to buy and to others, it is like a gift from the manufacturer for taking your time to inform them who bought their product.

Bribe = money up front for a favor

e.g. paying a politician to see things your way


A bribe is not a rebate and a rebate is not a bribe. Bribes are illegal, rebates are not. Rebates artificially alter the price of a product. When an OEM buys extra products from one manufacturer, it naturally decreases the likelihood that said OEM will buy products from another manufacturer unless the original can't keep up with demand or costs too much. That's economics.

FordGT90ConceptA rebate can't be illegal in one situation and legal in another. That is a double standard. It doesn't matter who is bigger than who, the end result is always the same (move product).

In dealing with semiconductors, the profit margins come down to manufacturing process. Intel has always been on equal or smaller process than AMD. From that statement, we know that price-wise, Intel has always been capable of selling their products for the same amount or less.

Again, AMD got spanked because AMD was/is being AMD (no ads, generally behind on processing power, poor decisions, slow to change process, etc.). Intel was just doing what they have been doing for the past two decades: selling great products at competitive prices (rebate or not--irrelevant).

If the majority of consumers actually cared if their computer had an Intel or AMD processor, Dell wouldn't have been offering only Intel processors for over two decades. I highly doubt rebates had anything to do with Dell's decision--it was market demand (or lack of).

TheMailMan78Automotive makers should be fined too. I mean I've gotten several "loyalty" rebates over the years. Why doesn't the EU go after BMW? I got 5,000 dollar rebate for buying a second BMW and not another brand. I only got that rebate because I bought another BMW. If I would have bought a Benz and skipped a purchase from BMW that rebate would have been lost the next time I bought a one (BMW). So yeah rebates do work based off of a competitors sale.

Also what about El Fiendo point about restaurants selling only Coke and not Pepsi. Or vise versa. SO many other industries do what Intel did its pathetic. I'm not going to argue whether Intel broke the law or not. All I'm saying is whats good for the goose is good for the gander. This is why I feel its a payday and not "justice".

FordGT90ConceptGiga- means 1 billion (1,000,000,000) just as mega- means 1 million (1,000,000).
Gibi- means 2^30 (1,073,741,824) just as mebi- means 2^20 (1,048,576).

Prior to ~2002, giga- was used to describe gibi- (incorrectly). The -bi- prefix was introduced and standardized to make it known that gibi- is not equal to giga-. Microsoft has not adapted this but pretty much the rest of the industry has. If not outright adopting it, clarify what "GB" is used.

Seagate has always labeled their drives correctly. When you buy a 500 GB drive, you literally get at least 500 billion bytes. Microsoft labels it incorrectly saying 500 GB is 465 GB. That is an inequality unless you clarify 465 is actually GiB which makes it an equality.


Seagate has never been misleading, Microsoft was (still is). At bare minimum, Microsoft needs to put a "1 GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes) notice on their hard drive properties page.


Metal platters as well as optical mediums and networking equipment aren't constrainted to bits like physical transistors are in a memory. That is, the data in a given segment may not always satisfy this equation:

bits % 8 = 0

This is why they use base 10 instead of base 2--base 2 is irrelevant to those applications and base 10 is the defacto numbering system world-wide.


SSDs and Flash memory sticks do have transistors like their other memory counterparts where base 2 is relevant. They should be labeled as GiB just like RAM and cache memory.



Drives can be formatted using multiple formating standards. The capcity for one type of format won't necessarily equal the size of another format. Raw size is a good, universal standard.

SugarushIf Intel were doing so great then why not compete fair by offering great products at competitive prices, why exclude the inferior AMD from the market?

SugarushFirst of all there are a lot more car manufacturers than CPU manufacturers and none of them has a dominant market share.

SugarushIn case of Intel that choice was effectively taken from the consumers, if the average buyer went to the retailers he would get (almost) only a pre-built PC based on Intel CPU.

Meecrobin the computer industry they ALL started out labeling drives as 1024k=1MB, even seagate, if you need some proof i can probably dig up a 650mb Seagate or the like at home and show you

Meecroball of these are terms only used in computerized technology and have a set meaning form when computers got their start, changing the meaning now to allow your industry to effectively screw people by making noobs think 500GB=500gb when it really is 465gb once formated.

One of the more difficult problems you will face when working with computer hardware, especially hard drives, is the two different measurement definitions or terms used to calculate drive capacity. Capacity measurements are usually expressed in kilobytes (thousands of bytes), in megabytes (millions of bytes), or gigabytes (billions of bytes), however, due to a mathematical coincidence there are two different meanings for each of these measures.

Computers are digital, and with that store data using binary numbers, or powers of two, although we are accustomed to using decimal numbers, expressed as powers of ten. As it turns out, two to the tenth power, 2^10, is 1,024, which is very close in value to 1,000 (10^3). Similarly, 2^20 is 1,048,576, which is approximately 1,000,000 (10^6), and 2^30 is 1,073,741,824, close to 1,000,000,000 (10^9). As computer development became more prominent and binary numbers began to be used on a regular basis, computer scientists took note of this similarity and began using the abbreviations normally associated with decimal numbers, and applied them to binary numbers. This led to 2^10 being given the prefix "kilo", 2^20 given the prefix "mega", and 2^30 referred to as "giga".

This shorthand reference works well when used between technicians who regularly work in computer development, as they know what they are referring to, (and no one else really cares). However, when computers entered the mainstream, the dual reference began leading to quite a bit of confusion and inconsistency. In many areas of development, only binary values are used. As an example, 64 MB of RAM memory always means 64 times 1,048,576 bytes, never 64,000,000. Lending confusion to this mess though, in some areas only decimal values are used such as when the term, "56K modem" works at a maximum speed of 56,000 bits per second, not 57,344.

It's no secret that storage devices are the single largest area of confusion in this regard, as some drive manufacturers use the decimal method, while others use the binary method when advertising their drive capacities. Even some software companies play this game, with some software packages using binary megabytes and gigabytes, and others using decimal megabytes and gigabytes. If you are using smaller numbers, the difference between decimal and binary is rather insignificant, but as the numbers grow larger so does the disparity. As an example, there is only a 2.4% difference between a decimal and a binary kilobyte, but when you calculate a megabyte, this difference increases to approximately 5%. A gigabyte produces a difference of approximately 7.5%, which is a rather significant difference. Not too many years ago this difference, as it pertains to hard drives that is, wasn't all that noticeable when drive manufacturers advertised the size of their drives in decimal format, and you partitioned and formatted your drive in binary. Today, however, people are beginning to notice the difference between the two measures. As an example, should you purchase an "80 GB" hard drive, in all probability it will partition and format to about 74.2 to 76.3 gigabytes. Don't worry, there's nothing wrong with the drive, it's just that the manufacturer stated the 80 GB in decimal format, but Windows (MS-DOS) partitioned and formatted the disk in binary gigabytes. There are a few other issues with large hard drive capacities, but we'll address those in the drive limitations and barriers section of this topic area.

Another issue of importance is that of converting between binary gigabytes and binary megabytes. Decimal gigabytes and megabytes differ by a factor of 1,000, however binary measurement differs by 1,024. So the same 80 GB hard disk is 80,000 MB in decimal terms, however the 76.3 binary gigabytes are equal to 78,131 binary megabytes (76.3 times 1,024).......

Meecrobso when is ram going to start being rated in MiB? seems its rated in MB and 1024k=1MB and 1024MB=1GB in ram.......want a screenshot?