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

i wouldnt call it a conspiracy. everyone is doing it lol.

its just "Good buisness practice" to them, you know
"Securing profits"
"Maximizing profit"
"eliminate competition"

well if they work togeather to control the market, there isnt any competition now is there?
and they are maximizing and sucuring that maximized profit
and their share holders surely find this good buisness leadership

But, i must point out the truth. That this is not true capitalism. In a true free capitalistic society, corporations must follow certain rules. one of those rules being that they may not consort togeather to form a Monopoly.

but the problem is today, everyones breaking the anti-trust

theres monopolys forming across the board, if not already in place for decades.

Just because 2 business have different names does not mean it is 2 separate entities. They may act as one and work as one in the market place, thats more like how 1 entity acts

look at the larger corporate picture. a umbrella corp will hold 1000's of subsidiary corp's under it. even down on the floor at wall street, many investors in ATI/AMD also are the investors in NVIDIA

i think they are both great companys, and the work they do is great, i praise that, but i just may suggest that profits be sacrificed for the common good of the video gamers, like myself.

that will never happen without a huge massive court battle tho, and if we are gonna waste our time on a huge endless massive court battle, Marlboro style, lets pick a bigger fish to fry

Like the Electric companies
or the Food -seed corporations

id rather take down the food seed monopoly with my time, than waste it on petty video game profiteers, they can wait on the backburner for now

Yeah, you guys are right.........its nothing new and its just the way the corrupt corporate world works. It's just so shocking to see someone get caught so red handed and be so guilty yet we know they are all like this.

Maybe it just hurts more and hits you more at home when you see that its a company that you really like and support.

muzzleflash is right however, there are bigger more important fish to fry. The kind of Big Fish that kill people because of their greed. Like Pharmaceutical company's and food company's.

[edit on 7/17/08 by housegroove23]

reply to post by Quantum_Squirrel

This is very interesting to me, I used to make computer chips for a living. This lawsuit might to destroy the grafix card markets. The reason is this:

When you make a computer chip, you dont make one, you make thousands and hundreds of thousands in one batch. A lot of the chips dont make it at the end of the line. They test every single one and the ones that fail are garbage. Co-incidentally, this is how the 'budget' celeron chips were invented and consequently sempron. They were pentium II's or III's that had failed caches. The chips were functional but slower. Back to grafix cards, they have a much lower yeild. In other words out of all the chips they start, I'm pretty sure less than half finish. I'm not justifying what they do but I'm pretty sure they had to do it to stay in business.

On a personal note, the practices of Intel during the price wars in 2000-2005 really upset me. There was no conspiracy there that I know of but they with-held technology so that they could beat AMD in benchmarks when their new products came out. It actually failed, but Intel remained on top.

During that same time, I was very upset about the grafx card conspiracy also. Thats when I started asking co-workers about how they got away with it, and the low-yeild was explained to me.

The other problem with the whole scenario is this:

AMD hasn't owned ATI this whole time. AMD purchased ATI after this was going on. AMD couldn't really compete with Intel, so the government has repeatedly subsidized them and given enormous tax breaks so that Intel would not become a monopoly. this is thoughout their history, not just in the scope of this lawsuit.

Both AMD and Intel have laid off thousands of people since 2000 becasue the process of making computer chips is becoming more and more automated. AMD is hanging on by a thread last I heard. I hope this lawsuit does not ruin them because their product is superior and I dislike giving any money to Intel.

As far as my choice in grafix cards is concerned, I cant imagine that this lawsuit will bring down the price of video cards. I will have to watch the lawsuit as it evolves but it will certainly damage the tech sector.

Originally posted by housegroove23

muzzleflash is right however, there are bigger more important fish to fry. The kind of Big Fish that kill people because of their greed. Like Pharmaceutical company's and food company's.

[edit on 7/17/08 by housegroove23]

From little acorns .. mighty oaks will grow.

the thing that makes me chuckle most in this thread is the fact that while it has just been revealed that the 2 biggest video cards manufacturers in the world have been fixing prices, even inflating them and teaming up to reap the most cash out of general public . some people are on this thread with the age old debate of which is better? nvidia or ati? LOL

Originally posted by Quantum_Squirrel

Originally posted by housegroove23

muzzleflash is right however, there are bigger more important fish to fry. The kind of Big Fish that kill people because of their greed. Like Pharmaceutical company's and food company's.

[edit on 7/17/08 by housegroove23]

From little acorns .. mighty oaks will grow.

the thing that makes me chuckle most in this thread is the fact that while it has just been revealed that the 2 biggest video cards manufacturers in the world have been fixing prices, even inflating them and teaming up to reap the most cash out of general public . some people are on this thread with the age old debate of which is better? nvidia or ati? LOL

lol, well... if you are going to pay 500 dollars, which one is better? Might as well get the better out of the two if you are going to get raped.

An interesting conspiracy, AMD have only owned ATI for a couple years, and this price fixing has been going on for 5 years or so? the takeover probably created a few information leaks here and there. But with Nvidia openly criticizing Intel at some press conference for working on Larrabee - If this conspiracy is true, it makes sense for Nvidia to be cheesed off at Intel for potentially disrupting their careful plans to fix prices and release dates of everything, by Intel introducing a new GPU that could steal competition away from both Nvidia and ATI.

Needless to say, It makes me laugh when people talk about how the price of graphics cards has gone up so much - I remember back to the days of the 486's, 386's and beyond, i'm sure the average cost of a pc components back then was even more expensive. A half decent 486 when they came out cost £1000 easy, bearing in mind this is 2 decades ago, so with inflation and all, I could build a top of the range system these days for £1000 easy.

I felt recently with ATI, the price/performance ratio has been really good. The new 4870 is being sold at £180 and it is regarded as a very good graphics card. Bearing in mind as well, this is a 2d/3d card, back in the days of the voodoo 1 and 2, it was a seperate 3d card, so we'd have to add up the cost of a 2d and 3d card for a complete gaming platform.

Compared to the prices we used to have when PC's werent so common then yeah we do get much better configuration for the money we used to get 10 or so years ago.

The conspiracy is true. Nvidias last few series of cards were dissapointing as if they were waiting for ATI..

This is no different than chrysler and their damned overpriced 40k challenger.

Only to be marked up as high as 70k at dealerships.

You know how you win? Don't buy it!!!!!
they release something so "sensationally remarkable" every year that suddenly the hardware you have that is fine is psychologically a piece of crap. Don't fall for it!

Consumers who do not participate in massive herding behavior like IDIOTS camping out in front of a damned store will force them to lower their prices. AMD is already in deep doo doo, they have no leg to stand on with this. And Nvidia is in for the same thing as soon as this recession gains momentum.

Karma will be a bitch for both, and good!

Well i hope the management is fired, the company gets sued and has its share price docked significantly and i hope these two names become synonymous with the words scam and cheat. But this is just the tip of the iceberg people, the whole world is rife with this kind of teaming from market leaders keeping the competition down i hope more company's are found out! Company's should have a lifespan as with all things the ones that prolong their existence by cheating are bad for all of us slowly releasing technology bit by bit to exploit profit rather than letting the new blood take us to new heights.

wow I can't bealive that.

They are not the only ones doing it. AT&T and many big isp/nsp corps are doing something similar.

I am currently trying to get a internet connections that will allow me to be able to use a server on the network. So far I been searching for 5 months haven't found anything.

They all point to having me to get a dedicated line and making me sign a contact which I read they told me it's going to total to 200 bucks every year and that's it.

I read the contract and in the contract is says that it's a setup fee 200 bucks 85 bucks for the modem, 500 bucks for the maintenance monthly fee. They basicly lie to you verbally and then you caught them in their lies when reading the contract fully and they were quickly telling me that oh you don't need to read it and told me to sign it saying that it's just about the 200 dollar fee and many other regulations like you can't hack other computer ect ect.

I got ticked off hearing more and more illegal stuff their getting away with everyday.

these stories you read is a small % that's really going on. There is more happening currently they just where caught at it. They should be required to give out free graphic cards for at least one whole month.

Also Microsoft copied from ubuntu linux os the logo you should see msn spaces they have a logo of 3 or 4 human figures holding hands in a circle which is the ubuntu os logo.

I hope ubuntu goes after them for a copyright infringement.