A Real conspiracy! ATI (AMD) and NVIDIA Fix Prices in the US, Class Action Slapped Against them

sorry for being rude - but the idiots who rush out to by the latest ` shiny thing ` which gives < 5% preformance increase over last months shiny thing deserve to pay the insane prices that they do

loads of people have hours of fun with ` obsolete ` games platforms

my mate has a PS one - bought for 10 quid - and he gets loads of games for 1 to 2 pounds each

people mock him for playing such old games - his response is a cheery ` hey ... its new to me `

when i upgrade my computer bits - i ALWAYS buy what was the ` state of the art ` mega preformance processor , graphics card etc from 12 months previous

i just look at back issues of magazines - and pick the item with the best reviews - highest preformance and price tag - and go out and find one

usually for a quater to 1/6th the price it was on launch - and always BNIB with warranty

what price gouging ???? - lol

i do not do much gameing - but a lot of photo / vid / graphics stuff

so ` obsolete ` gaming kit runs lightening fast with all my editing and graphics packages

Doesn't really surprise me. It cracks me up when I see benchmarks from people who I know, - that never get released. 18000 3dmark06 in 2006 on ATi anyone? And how the releases of products almost seem perfectly timed out.

reply to post by yellowcard


No.

Nvidia hasn't been 'wiping the floor' with ATi since Geforce 6.

The Geforce 6 has # anisotropic filtering that was infact of INFERIOR quality to the Geforce FX. The X850XT PE wiped the floor with the 6800 Ultra. 6600GT was fantastic on the midrange. Sure the X850 didn't have Shaders 3, but by the time it became a big deal the X850 was a slow card which wouldn't be capable of running it in the first place. I know this because it was my old card.

Geforce 7? One FP16 blending unit mean't that it could only either FP16 HDR OR AntiAliasing, while the ATi X1k series could do both. Geforce 7 still has the SUB Geforce fx anisotropic filtering. It came early which was a plus. Performange was similar.

ATi only really falterred with the overly hyped ATi 2k series which just plain sucked... oh well... 2900XT made some nice 3dmark records. Geforce 8 has fantastic AF ( finally ) and could do HDR + AA and dramatically faster. Cracks me up 'cause I know someone with a ATi card that will wipe the floor with the GTX 280, and this was in 2006.

G92 (late GF 8 and GF 9) was the same old repackaged to us again and sold as new which was great upper high end. Cheap, fast, efficiant. I have one - awsome purchase.

Radeon X3k series was damned cheap, didn't use much power, & was pretty fast - fantastic on midrange, without Nvidias # drivers. I can make a list of all the problems if you want.

Each has there ups and downs, as you can see.

[edit on 17/7/2008 by C0bzz]

Why do I find so many of those who call those, that buy the 5% more perf cards for huge prices, stupid? Jealous?
It's the his money not yours! Let him have his GTX 280 SLI

I must agree with the fact that they have been fixing their prices for maximum profit. It took quite long before the new ATI cards arrived. Nvidia probably made some money off those ridiculously expensive GTX 280's.. Most waited for the ATI cards but the performance freaks..

I don't know how anyone can say that AMD's prices are too high. There new cards own Nvidia as far as price/performance goes. As for Nvidia, their prices are ridiculous. £350-£450 for a gtx280 and it doesn't even support DX10.1. The ATI 4850 in crossfire comes close and in some games beats it and at half the price.

I can remember paying £325 for a geforce 3 when they first came out and for the price, it just wasn't worth it and was highly overated. I now have a Geforce 8800gts 640mb that cost me £215 just over a year ago, and see no reason to upgrade. I can just about play every game with detail maxed out. Race driver grid is perfect maxed out. The only exception being Crysis which run's ok in xp with most settings on very high (using a hack).

When it comes to PC gaming, you've never had it so good. I just can't see the point of buying a top of the range card for £400. It's a waste of money and you don't need the power. You're better off waiting for next years budget cards, that will no doubt trounce all over it. In the meantime, buy a budget card. An ATi 4850, 4870 or geforce 9800gtx+ is all you need.

www.driverheaven.net...
www.legitreviews.com...

ATI 4870x2 preview - Nvidia worried. to release yet another gfx card and it's dx10.1 to combat the 4870x2.

www.driverheaven.net...
www.pcper.com...
www.techreport.com...

Nvidia expected to offer DirectX 10.1 GPU in Q1 2009 or earlier
www.tgdaily.com...

It probably cost Nvidia and ATi $1.00 to make a video card in China. If people would just stop paying those enormous prices for video cards they might actually get the message.

reply to post by kindred


What advantage does DX10.1 give you??
Seriously. I want the answer..

The ATI 4870x2 looks too good to be true
I wonder how Nvidia will counter it.. GTX 280 X2? For twice the price of ATI 4870X2.

reply to post by cloakndagger


Assemblying the card itself maybe.. But the chips cost many monyz. At least they say so

It's called 'capitalism'. This kind of thing happens all the time, all over the place. I don't really see why you're all so surprised. I'm not saying it's right (or even close), but it's the nature of our greed-driven system of commerce.

in a supposed open and free market this should NOT happen,

Competition is meant to drive the price down, with competing companies, the rush to get the latest model out should be a thrill for manufacturer and consumer. and the Consumer should reap the main benefits , thats why in the U.K we have the monopolies commission to prevent a company ( or group of cohorts) from doing exactly this!.

reply to post by Quantum_Squirrel


In this day and age, what company doesn't do this. It's all about the $$$$

Sounds to me lie AMD and ATI didn't grease the right politicians.

Bill Gates made that mistake as well and they're still trying to get more of Microsoft's dollars.

It's all about the dollars.

Isn't it usually the retailers who set too high prices to gain more profit?
They buy good from manufacturers and sell them as with as high prices as they can. If the usual price of an GTX 280 is around 500-600$ then the retailers sell them for 600-700$ or even more..

I kept my 6800GT for 3 years, but recently upgraded to a HD4850 for Crysis, and also just got hold of an HD4870 really cheaply. I could resell the 4870 at a premium as an unused item, or I could pull out the 4850, install the 4870, and sell the 4850 as a used item. I'm still mulling over what I should do. Which would benefit me more financially. I like the idea of getting an extra 7fps in Crysis on high, but the power consumption at idle on the 4870 is rather high.

Decisions decisions!



[edit on 17-7-2008 by RiotComing]

This is a bullSht conspiracy, most people are buying there products have the skills to install them manually, thus can figure out for themselves what item is best relative to price

Here's another conspiracy - the cost of new cars. It's obvious that they're sold at a certain price, and not because they're actually worth that.

A lot of the cards are technically the same - they're just running at different speeds, or have different amounts of memory on board.

Consumer choice isn't always a good thing - here's an example of where producing one excellent card would be better than 50 cards in the same range.

Their "top" card will always be what it is, so if it's the only one available, it's much cheaper, and the consumer doesn't get ripped off.

Well. it's nice that they got busted, however didn't Intel recently say that graphics cards are a thing of the past anyway due to home computers finnally going multi proccesor, multi-core? Sony has already forced companys to learn to program on multi core systems anyway when they released the PS3. Why have a card that anti-alias' when you can write it into the game/app itself and sluff it off to one core while the others do other tasks such as rendering, game AI,ect. You then don't need to wait for a new card that can handle some new shaders, again it just gets written into the software and sluffed to another core.

Originally posted by RiotComing
I kept my 6800GT for 3 years, but recently upgraded to a HD4850 for Crysis, and also just got hold of an HD4870 really cheaply. I could resell the 4870 at a premium as an unused item, or I could pull out the 4850, install the 4870, and sell the 4850 as a used item. I'm still mulling over what I should do. Which would benefit me more financially. I like the idea of getting an extra 7fps in Crysis on high, but the power consumption at idle on the 4870 is rather high.

Decisions decisions!



[edit on 17-7-2008 by RiotComing]

Sell both and get the 4870 X2

Originally posted by mirageofdeceit
A lot of the cards are technically the same - they're just running at different speeds, or have different amounts of memory on board.

This applies only to the cards of the same series like 8600GT vs 8600GT OC edition. Differences between different series are much more than just speeds and memory ammounts.


What I'm really seeing in the ATI vs Nvidia thing is that their both have relatively even cards. They both have their strengths and weaknesses. Imagine what incredible beasts we would have if they'd unite and make a card together. That would of course bring up the M$ syndrome. No competition..


Edit:
reply to post by LordBaskettIV


No matter how many cores a processor has it will never replace a stand alone graphics card. Games are using more and more CPU power and even more graphics. Multi-GPU graphics cards are the future.
Imagine what power would two 4870 X2 give you!

[edit on 17-7-2008 by Blue10110]

Originally posted by Blue10110
Sell both and get the 4870 X2

My motherboard is SLI not Crossfire though. I tried SLI 3 years ago with my 2 6800GTs, when it was first reintroduced (3Dfx and Voodoo were the originators of course), was a total waste of power heat and noise, plus the framerate was more often than not, much worse in games - the opposite what you'd want to happen. So never again for me will I do 2x graphic cards together.

EDIT -oh the X2 is a new card model!! Sorry my bad. I must read up on the benches!

[edit on 17-7-2008 by RiotComing]

Originally posted by cloakndagger
It probably cost Nvidia and ATi $1.00 to make a video card in China. If people would just stop paying those enormous prices for video cards they might actually get the message.

I hope that you do realize that there are quite a few direct costs and even more indirect costs that apply to the card than manufacturing alone. I'd hazard a guess that R&D and testing would be the largest direct cost, while salaries would be the largest indirect cost (as there are quite a few people who work for NVIDIA and ATI who are not directly related to making the end products - until recently I was one of them).

The operating margins haven't been a secret though, so it shouldn't be news to anybody that (at least NVIDIA) has done well with keeping the prices up and costs low. And as with any business you do your best to keep the prices as high as possible without hurting your sales (or hurting them more than necessary). The goal is to increase shareholder value, not charity.

reply to post by cloakndagger


Well that's funny because almost all electronics are manufactured in Taiwan. I don't think the cards need much labour to create - but the fabrication plants are VERY expensive & a large proportion of chips they create are dumped because they don't work. That's one of the reasons high end chips are dramatically more expensive.... because they're hard to make.

That of course, disregards the artificial price inflation, and I'm sure it's possible for the chips to be far cheaper.

[edit on 17/7/2008 by C0bzz]

I used to moved all the Ati freight to all the Best Buy locations.
My customer told me they( ati and Nvdia) colaborate and stagger their releases. This was to maximize profits off of people who buy the next most powerful video card no matter what. I didn't think of it at the time....what did i care I got my cards for free.

Looking at the bigger picture.....this is very bad for consumers
they go for as much as 750.00 dollars per unit.
They are built in china/philipines and packaged here for less then 50.00 dollars.


Sad...

Originally posted by RiotComing

Originally posted by Blue10110
Sell both and get the 4870 X2

My motherboard is SLI not Crossfire though. I tried SLI 3 years ago with my 2 6800GTs, when it was first reintroduced (3Dfx and Voodoo were the originators of course), was a total waste of power heat and noise, plus the framerate was more often than not, much worse in games - the opposite what you'd want to happen. So never again for me will I do 2x graphic cards together.

EDIT -oh the X2 is a new card model!! Sorry my bad. I must read up on the benches!

[edit on 17-7-2008 by RiotComing]

Yeah I know the SLi used to s*** but it's showing better results in newer and more graphics intense games. But the difference is still from nothing to almost double performance.

Nowadays we have power saving tech. Nvidia boards are able to turn off the stand-alone cards and switch to the integrated graphics. Dunno about ATI. They had something too but I don't know how that works.