Nvidia Settles GPU Price-Fixing Antitrust Case

arcticstoat writes to report that Nvidia has offered up a settlement for the GPU price-fixing case. As a part of the settlement Nvidia would be required to pay $850,000 into a fund projected to hit $1.7 million (supposedly AMD/ATI would make up the other half). The antitrust case indicated that Nvidia and ATI worked together in order to 'fix, raise, maintain, and stabilize prices of GPUs sold in the US.'"

Comments

chise1

[chise1]

Wow, $850K? Damn, they're really going to be hurting after that one...

Re:chise1

[electrictroy]

I think they should have to refund money back to the customers. Back when the Record Companies were accused of CD price-fixing, that was the punishment they received. My family only got $44 ($22 for me and $22 for my mother), but that's still better than giving it to the politicians where it can be misappropriated on nonsense (like studying butterfly sex).

Paypal received a similar punishment (I got $54 that time), albeit for different reasons.

Re:chise1

[mrmeval]

Specifically decline to be a part of the reward. Sue them in small claims court for the cost of it. Don't BS about damages or whine about your tear etched joystick. ;)

You are doing it wrong

[psycho sparky]

A price fixing settlement fixed by the defendants.

Re:You are doing it wrong

[hairyfeet]

It also seems kinda bogus to me. It is ONLY for those that bought their cards from the Nvidia and ATI websites. How many folks actually buy their cards from the Nvidia website? If they and ATI got together to fix the price of GPUs,then everybody who bought a GPU during the time of collusion was affected,not simply those that bought from the GPU manufacturers website. After all,they set the price,which the card makers then simply passed on to the consumers. Or am I missing something here?

Re:You are doing it wrong

[WK2]

I was not even aware that Nvidia sold cards. Anywhere. It was my understanding that they only sell the chipsets, and other manufacturers put them into cards. I also didn't know that either Nvidia or ATI sold cards on their websites.

Re:You are doing it wrong

[BrookHarty]

I bought an ATI card for my mac back in the day.. Way too expensive, but only option..

Now how to I get my check?!

Re:You are doing it wrong

[sexconker]

Incorrect!
NVidia only sells the chips and reference designs.

This applies to anyone buying the GPUs, regardless of who made the board or who dumped the BIOS and stickers on it.

Re:You are doing it wrong

[mog007]

ATI does indeed sell ATI branded video cards on their website, or at least they used to before AMD bought them. But you're right about Nvidia, they don't sell cards, just the GPU.

Re:You are doing it wrong

[Klaus_1250]

they only sell the chipsets, and other manufacturers put them into cards.

Nowadays, they sell the chips and the reference design (e.g. that's why most cards look more or less the same). Haven't seen their own branded cards here (Netherlands) for a long time.

Re:You are doing it wrong

[hairyfeet]

The problem I see with it is this:this thing goes back to 2002. Who in the hell will still have the receipt for cards they bought SIX years ago? Hell,I've got Nvidia cards in 4 machines and another card sitting in a drawer(FX5200 leaf blower) and there is NO WAY I can even come up with the receipt for the last one. If the card works past the warranty the receipt is gone,if not before. So unless there are a whole lot more anal retentive folks out there the vast majority of those that bought them won't see squat. Now if they accept proof you have the cards(pics+serials) that would be one thing. But if they expect folks to be sitting on receipts for 6 year old graphics cards they have got to be nuts.

Re:You are doing it wrong

[innocent_white_lamb]

Who in the hell will still have the receipt for cards they bought SIX years ago?
 
Small businesses are required to keep receipts for business expenses (like computer equipment) for six years. At least, that's the requirement here -- I'd imagine it's the same or very similar everywhere.

Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[pecosdave]

The at least once daily "survey" every corporate gas station in the US has to do everyday can't be passed off as anything but price fixing / a trust. As far as I'm concerned they're screwing consumers a lot worse than a couple of GPU manufacturers.

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[Icegryphon]

yeah that would be nice but, government is part of the problem. Because selling gas to cheap is a Crime. No joke.

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[merreborn]

The at least once daily "survey" every corporate gas station in the US has to do everyday can't be passed off as anything but price fixing / a trust

Can you provide details/sources? I've never heard of this, but it certainly sounds interesting.

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[megamerican]

The at least once daily "survey" every corporate gas station in the US has to do everyday can't be passed off as anything but price fixing / a trust.

That's not ever going to happen. Composite government funds (investment funds and otherwise) own a majority stake in Exxon and probably most other publicly traded oil companies. The state of New York had 24.8 million shares of Exxon in 2006.

Could it be that our own Government over the last several decades has been promoting to those fortune 500 companies, of which Government owns most through Bond - Loan investment / stock ownership [EXAMPLES: 82% stock ownership of Microsoft Corporation, Disney 61%, AOL - Time Warner 58%, EXXON 72%] to manufacture abroad so that Government would realize greater returns on their investments at the Peoples of the USA's expense in jobs and wealth retention.

http://cafr1.com/

It should be pretty obvious why most corporations are allowed to run roughshod over the American people. If they properly investigated these companies it would cut into their bottom line. Welcome to the Corporation of the United States of America!

Just google CAFR with any state, city, country, school district, etc... to find out how much money they are hiding from you.

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[pecosdave]

I've worked around retail petroleum extensively in the past, most US based and with the exception of one really well known.

Each morning (sometimes more often) any store that is corporate owned or corporate contracted (i.e. anything that isn't Lou's gas and grub that doesn't show a logo) sends their manager/accountant person around to certain gas stations. This manager has to write down the prices of the other gas stations, this includes others with the same logo as the managers own but more importantly those that don't have it. They then send these prices into the corporate offices. The prices are then determined for the submitting store based on the prices around that store. Sometimes it's just a computerized "here it is" sometimes there's some more thought to it, based on how much do we want to raise/lower all the prices a whole? If prices were truly supply and demand there would be no survey, there would simply be "I'm easily selling lots of gas, lets charge more" vs. "I'm not selling much gas, lets charge less".

This is more of a legal loophole. Instead of Shell, Chevron, and Exxon agreeing to keep prices at a certain level in some back room meeting, which is illegal, they agree to do surveys and stay within an unwritten tolerance level of one another.

Lou's Gas and Grub isn't immune either. See, he buys his gas from the big companies, he isn't necessarily contracted to just one of them, but they sale their gas based on the current market price. They can send one guy out to deliver gas on a highway on 100 mile stretch in one day, he can charge the last guy on the trip $0.50 a gallon more than he charged the first guy if the market is that varied 100 miles away.

It's not as efficient or steadfast as a back room deal, but it's sufficient.

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[socz]

Maybe not exactly the same thing you're talking about, but check out gas stations on opposing corners. When one raises the price, so does the other. Same happens with price drops. That's not collusion?

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't understand the system.

If the local grocer notices that a competitor has apples for sale for $.20 less than they do, what's to prevent them from lowering prices to match? Likewise if the price is $.20 higher -- why not raise yours, perhaps only $.10, and make a little more profit?

If you have apples already purchased and on the shelves, and your supplier suddenly raises prices $.50, do you keep selling the apples you have at the old, cheaper price, or do you eat the price difference and hope that you can still afford to restock your shelves when you sell out of the cheaper ones and have to buy the next, more expensive batch from the supplier?

The answers to those questions are somewhat easier if you are a grocer, because your product is diversified. You can even out your costs and sales across your entire produce selection. Maybe you really can sell a product far cheaper than cost to bring people in to buy other things. Maybe you can eat the higher supplier price, as long as you make your money on everything else that week.

But if you are a gas station, where you essentially sell one product, can you afford to charge the same price you paid, plus a few percent, if the supplier gas prices go up by 10%? No. Not when it might cost you $50000 to fill your storage tanks. If your cost from the supplier goes up $5000, you can't afford to keep the prices at what you paid for the previous tanker from the supplier, you have to up the prices right now, otherwise you won't be able to afford to pay the tanker when the next one rolls in, and it costs you $55000 this time, and you don't have $5000 laying around. Actually, maybe you'll manage for a little while, but you'll be out many thousands of dollars and out of business in a month. Retailers only survive on a few percent margin (typically 5-9% or so), and a 10% supplier price change is therefore the equivalent of ALL of your profits.

What you are looking at is ordinary, competing, market forces for the price of gas at the pump, combined with the time-averaged ~$10k to ~$100k cost for each batch of fuel from the supplier (depending on the size of the tanker and the flowthrough at a given station). And are the suppliers colluding setting those prices? Not likely. They are competitive too in most markets, but their time average is much longer because of the time/cost of refining. If the price of crude goes from $120/barrel to $90/barrel in a couple of days, are you going to knock off the price of the gas you sell to the stations? Heck no, because you already paid the $120/barrel a few weeks or months ago at the input to the refinery (the crude sitting in your storage tanks), and you've got to make that money back or you will lose MILLIONS of dollars rather than the mere thousands of a retailer. Plus, for all you know, it will go back up to $120/barrel next week, and you'll need the money to pay for the next supertanker full.

People do not understand that prices at some levels in the system will naturally lag the "instantaneous" price at other levels. They aren't synchronized because of the vast differences in the size of the batches of fuel and the processing/delivery times involved. It might not look that way sometimes, but what you see isn't price fixing, it's a fairly responsive market with substantial time lag.

Oh, and there's another way to look at it. If you think the current price rises are due to fixing, then ask yourself this question: why on Earth would companies pay billions of dollars to develop tar sands projects in Canada, to pay 5-10x the cost per barrel of oil for extraction, unless the regular/cheap oil elsewhere in the world really was getting harder to find?

The reason prices have risen is simple. The supplies that are left are genuinely harder to find and extract and/or to ship securely, and global demand still continues to rise. Superimposed on this are short-term fluctuations such as from hurricanes Gustav and Ike, which causes temporary shutdown of refineries at major oil supply ports.

Oh, and on top of all that is currency fluctuations.

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[RightSaidFred99]

You must not understand business. See, if my competitors are charging $8 a gallon and I know my gas costs me $0.80 a gallon, I'm not going to go "gee, I should charge my cost + 50% so I'll just charge $1.20". I'm going to go "shit, this asshole's charging $8 a gallon, I can charge $7.50 a gallon and make a killing". Only an idiot only looks at his prices and then sets the price based on some predetermined margin.

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[deraj123]

No. It's called business. I raise the price to a point that enough people are willing to pay it for me to turn the profit that I want, while not raising it so high that I'm worried about getting undercut by a competitor. It stands to reason that if people on one corner are willing to pay a certain price, people on the opposite corner are probably also willing to pay that same price. It also stands to reason that if the market price of gas goes up, then the chances of me being undercut are much lower.

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[coolsnowmen]

but what happens when you run out of gas to sell? then you have to go to the good'ole boys and buy some gas. But they won't sell it to you at a 'fair' price because you've been undercutting their friends.

If the distributors collude, you lose.

It happened in the diamond industry. Which is why de-beers can't operate directly on US soil. Or they would be sued under anti-trust laws. While diamonds and gasoline are completely different, I wouldn't be surprised if it happened.

Even ram companies got busted just a little bit ago for price-fixing.

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[Feanturi]

No, it's competition.. If I'm charging $1.35/litre, and the guy across the street jumps up to $1.40, I'd be a fool to stay at $1.35. I'll go to $1.39 because I can still sell more gas than the guy across the street and make better profit than I was. If he drops to $1.25 I'd better drop too, otherwise people will get their gas at his place instead of mine. This is just common sense, why does everyone have to scream conspiracy at everything?

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[Anonymous Coward]

"If prices were truly supply and demand there would be no survey, there would simply be "I'm easily selling lots of gas, lets charge more" vs. "I'm not selling much gas, lets charge less"."

Let me get this straight. Your local grocer can't check up on what the competitor down the street is charging for a loaf of bread and set their price accordingly? It's unfair collusion?

You're wishing for an impossible world where vendors don't pay any attention to the price their competitors charge, and only watch their customers and own product. That's crazy.

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[mabhatter654]

not a joke at all. Rockefeller made his Billion dollars doing exactly what Microsoft does by buying one gas station and using profits from others to sell gas at far below market cost until the other stations sold or failed. Microsoft's tactics of bundling software are harder to prove as "below cost" so they get away with it. The Standard Oil break up was several times larger (in real economic units) than Microsoft at it's peak.

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[kesuki]

it's worse where i live. they actually have a state law mandating that gas stations aren't allowed to sell gas at a loss, and they have the same law for retail stores. now this sounds like protection for mom and pop stores, but only small towns below 4000 people have 'mom and pop' gas stations, and right now we're 50 cents a gallon more than the state next to us.

the reason the law doesn't work? well the rest of the country doesn't have loss leader laws, so all the big distribution systems are all regional anyways, you can't buy gas cheap from anyone else, and thus your price winds up being higher than the regional brands anyways. mom and pop thrift stores haven't done any better than wal-mart for the loss leader laws, although some boutique small town shopping districts have survived wal-martification. so loss leader laws definitely can save small town America from the wal-marts of the world. just not from the exxons of the world.

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[hairyfeet]

Umm....That would be true if it happened kinda gradually,but I have watched the gas prices in the nearest big city (LR) change in less than an hour across the board. So unless they are sitting on the phones while guys on rooftops spy on each other with binoculars I kinda doubt they are able to change every gas station in a city that size that quick. And if it ISN'T price fixing,wouldn't you want it to be investigated just to put the rumors to rest? After all we are talking about citizens getting gouged far worse than anything any other monopoly has EVER pulled off if it turned out to be true.

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[kesuki]

the collusion on the price of gasoline is the minor issue, the collusion on the price of a barrel of oil is absolutely crazy, and is causing riots in countries that can't afford the price of oil and still put food on the table.

for most of the history major governments have leaned heavily on oil suppliers to keep a low, affordable price, there are all kinds of laws about this all over the world, but all of a sudden, since USA invaded iraq, one of the worst offenders for breaking opec rules, causing iran to also break opec rules... to keep pace. well the price of oil has gone up 375% in just 5 and a half years. http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/oilprice1947.gif note: the graph has the date of the iraq war wrong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War march 20th 2003 not 2004 as shown... sorry first graph i could find. putting the start of the iraq war in 2004 is misleading, suggesting the price went up for all of 2003 without reason.

notice the price spike starts the EXACT YEAR the iraq war starts. sounds like exxon started the war by their proxy, gw bush, a texas oil man from way back. iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction, they had violated exxons principals by creating artificially high supply for a quick buck instead of following opec production goals.

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, your argument doesn't make any sense. Basically what you are saying, is that if companies actually use their brains and look at the prices of their surrounding competition, then suddenly the effect of a free market vanishes! Do you really think that companies sit around blindly using their profits as the sole basis for setting the price of their product? I surely wouldn't want to invest in a company like that! Now, if (as you propose), it were true that there were some conspiracy between these companies to keep prices higher than normal, then it would also be true that if any single company lowers its price closer to the market equilibrium, it's individual profits will rise. But wait a minute, that means for any such conspiracy to be successful, there must be a hard lower limit on the price. Think about it. Suppose a group of companies implement a 10% rule such that no company is allowed to lower its prices more than 10% under the group average. Now if I were a company in this agreement, and lowest price was closest to the market equilibrium and hence most profitable, I would lower my prices 10%. Now my fellow companies in this agreement aren't stupid. They see me making more money than them and lower their prices too. But now I'm free to lower my prices even more because the average price has now gone down. See where I'm going? The average price will approach the market equilibrium. Thus, for any such conspiracy to exist, there must be a hard lower limit. Therefore, your logic is false.

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[mog007]

I wasn't aware that DeBeers didn't operate in the US. I figured they were ok with paying the monopoly fines, because they more than made up the cost in sales of their over priced carbon.

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, your argument doesn't make any sense. Basically what you are saying, is that if companies actually use their brains and look at the prices of their surrounding competition, then suddenly the effect of a free market vanishes! Do you really think that companies sit around blindly using their profits as the sole basis for setting the price of their product? I surely wouldn't want to invest in a company like that! Now, if (as you propose), it were true that there were some conspiracy between these companies to keep prices higher than normal, then it would also be true that if any single company lowers its price closer to the market equilibrium, it's individual profits will rise. But wait a minute, that means for any such conspiracy to be successful, there must be a hard lower limit on the price. Think about it. Suppose a group of companies implement a 10% rule such that no company is allowed to lower its prices more than 10% under the group average. Now if I were a company in this agreement, and lowest price was closest to the market equilibrium and hence most profitable, I would lower my prices 10%. Now my fellow companies in this agreement aren't stupid. They see me making more money than them and lower their prices too. But now I'm free to lower my prices even more because the average price has now gone down. See where I'm going? The average price will approach the market equilibrium.
Thus, for any such conspiracy to exist, there must be a hard lower limit.Therefore, your logic is false

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[socz]

oh but that's the kicker, i can't recall where i read or saw on the news many years back, but they found out that price fixing was wide spread at least in Los Angeles, California. Where say all of the arco's would charge $2.69 for gas in the AM and raise it up to $2.73 in the PM, where 76 and mobile stations would match their prices in agreement, not because of competition. These were stations not across from each other but spread around town.

The reason they were caught was because it was too much of a coincidence that these stations across town were hitting the same exact prices. Now I won't lie and say I know every aspect of how a gas station is run, but i am also not completely ignorant about it either.

Just recently i saw a guy on the news that was interviewed because he runs a consumer watch group that monitors fuel. His website lists the cheapest place for gas and their average prices. Because of the amount of time (years) he's been tracking fuel prices with the help of many people, he has spread sheets and charts that correlate the info that doesn't only point to "competition" but to collusion.

It was on kcal 9 here in LA. I'll look into it and see if i can find it. But either way it is a problem. Think it's competition? I just heard on the news that fuel in the south east is eh, a little hard to come by. If you can find it it's very expensive. That's not competition, that's price gouging.

I know most of these issues can never be solved, but *i wish* we could live in a better world where people who are trying to leave town because of the hurricanes damage could afford to leave even *if* they could find fuel! Yep, i know it's unrealistic, but i can wish can't i?

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[coolsnowmen]

I did read that 2 years ago when I proposed and was researching diamonds...but wikipedia says you are right.

I swore it was here: http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/prologue.htm
but I didn't see it and don't have time to read the whole thing right now.

"Industrial diamonds - In 2004 De Beers pleaded guilty and paid a $10 million fine to the United States Department of Justice to settle a 1994 charge that De Beers had conspired with General Electric to fix the price of industrial diamonds.[24][25]" - wikipedia

There are multiple locations in the us accoriding to: http://www.debeers.com/page/storelocator

Whoops..sorry. But they are certainly a monopoly and and have price fixed and probably continue to do so. And as long as women demand diamonds...noone can stop them...

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[mog007]

It's not difficult to stop them, even if you want a diamond. Either buy a used a diamond, something that DeBeers has convinced women not to do over the past century. The other option is to get a synthetic diamond. There are a few companies which make gemstone quality synthetic diamonds. DeBeers has been trying to come up with all sorts of methods for distinguishing one of these synthetics for a natural diamond, but as far as I know, they haven't found a way yet, because these synthetics ARE real diamonds.

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[Feanturi]

That's not competition, that's price gouging. Actually that's just Capitalism. Hard to find means you're going to pay through the nose. We don't have to always like it, but this is the system that we supposedly support being in the countries we are in.

Re:Fine, now go after the petroleum companies,

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that when you go $1,39, he goes $1,38, and you go $1,37, he goes $1,36, (queue more competitors and repeat, ) until you're on a competitive yet profitable price.

Wait. What?

[Stanistani]

...anyone who bought a graphics card directly from Nvidia or ATI's website in the US ...

How is that going to help the rest of the affected customers?

Re:Wait. What?

[Pulzar]

How is that going to help the rest of the affected customers?

The rest of the affected customers bought cards from manufacturers that simply use nvidia/ati chips. You can't sue nvidia/ati for what those manufacturers charged for their cards... unless you claim that they forced them to sell at increased prices, but that'd be a different lawsuit altogether.

Re:Wait. What?

[X0563511]

I just checked nvidia's shop, and I see no products direct from nvidia. They are all third-party cards sold by third-party vendors.

Re:Wait. What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any real gamer, who bought one of the midrange or higher end cards, in no way is someone who bought from ATI or nVidia's website...

I've bought nearly 15 graphics cards in this time frame, most of them genuine ATI progucts, and a few eVGA and Sapphire cards. All were either acquired from New Egg or Bestbuy.

There's also no detail hete on how the 1.7 million will be issued. Does each effecte dparty get a fixed amount, an amount per card, a percentage of the card price, what? What proof do they need to provide as well, as I doubt most o fthese people kept copies of online purchase receits or registered their cards after purchase.

This settlement is complete BS, and all ATI and nVidia are doing is putting money into a fund that after time, when virtually noone claims the money, will go back to them again.

ANAYONE who purchased any ATI or nVidia based product with a sticker price over $129 should get back $20 if it's a sub $200 card, $30 for a sub $300 card, $50 for a sub $500 card, and $75 for any card over $500. A receipt from any web vendor or brick and mortar store should be acceptible. For anyone without a receipt for purchase, they should be able to register the serial number of their cards online , which should produce a manufacturing date for the card, and value the purchase price assuming the card was sold at retail price 6 months after manufacture.

Re:Wait. What?

[deraj123]

This seems to be about GPU price fixing. The price of the GPU invariably affects the price that the other manufacturers can sell their cards for.

Re:Wait. What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you realize that $20 is more than the chip costs on a $100 card? The rest of the price you pay does not go to ATI or nVidia at all!

Nothing like some good olâ(TM) bipartisan coo

[Gonrada]

I'm glad to see people putting aside their differences and working together⦠â¦oh.

Yay more Useless Class Action

[ironwill96]

I say it is useless because the regular blokes who bought the over-priced graphics cards won't see jack squat from this. As is the case with every class action i've ever seen, what ends up happening is whichever litigation-happy person initiated it gets a large settlement (as do their lawyers) and everyone else gets $5 coupons for cracker jacks.

Re:Yay more Useless Class Action

[moderatorrater]

I don't know, I feel like I'm getting a pretty good deal. Of course, I love cracker jacks.

Re:Yay more Useless Class Action

[spire3661]

Why do the lawyers get cash, but we get coupons?? I really hate corporate lawyers.

Re:Yay more Useless Class Action

[dugn]

And this is supposed to discourage frivolous class-action suits?

Re:Yay more Useless Class Action

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course lawyers do benefit the most from a class action, but keep in mind that however little the consumers get from the lawsuit itself, it's more than they would have gotten otherwise. If you have ever felt that a class action you were involved in did not do justice for you, you always have the option to exempt yourself from the settlement in order to pursue your own lawsuit -- this is boilerplate stated in every settlement notice. Of course, realistically speaking, most people are not going to go through a lawsuit to get a refund, and whatever they get from a class action is essentially a freebie that required virtually no action on their part, so they can't really complain about the result.

The actual benefit to class action is not getting even-stevens between the consumers and the corporations, but the fact that regardless of where the money is going, the companies have to pay. And that means they lose whatever they were trying to get away with, have their reputation tarnished, and hopefully they think twice before trying something like this again.

America's litigation system works, to a degree. For example, this is largely why, ever since Ubi was sued and pulled its support for StarForce, the NA publishing region has been virtually StarForce-free. The PAL regions however still have to suffer it on a daily basis, because their corporations have not felt the sting of American-style lawsuits.

While the system is not perfect, that is far from saying that things would be the same or better off without class action lawsuits. Basically these are all things that should be addressed by legislation and criminal prosecution. But our legislative system is slow and ungainly, while our civil system is effective and profitable. As citizens we have essentially learned that suing is more effective than voting, and that lawyers are still slightly more tolerable than politicians.

Re:Yay more Useless Class Action

[b4dc0d3r]

As long as the company gets punished, I usually don't care to whom the money goes. But in this case the dollar amount does not seem large enough to justify apathy, so I agree with you in this particular case but not in general.

Re:Yay more Useless Class Action

[AmberBlackCat]

To make matters worse, the people who got the coupon won't qualify for the $0.20 they would get for the $5.00 Cracker Jack price-fixing fiasco.

Re:Yay more Useless Class Action

[archmedes5]

Mass Tort is a scam. Lawyers use every tactic in the book to bring in clients, get a settlement and then scoop out 40% for themselves. Both the company and the consumer loses and the lawyer gets a jet.

Re:Yay more Useless Class Action

[Anonymous Coward]

That is so true.

Years ago I received sum from a class action suit against Nintendo. It was a $5 coupon that could be applied towards a Nintendo game.

That isn't punishment, it's a reward.

Drop in the bucket

[seeker_1us]

Nividia posted sales of USD 892.7 million.

So they offer to settle for $850 thousand?

0.1% of their sales???

Re:Drop in the bucket

[oldspewey]

Nividia posted sales of USD 892.7 million.

So they offer to settle for $850 thousand?

0.1% of their sales???

... which in AMD's case would probably be 100% of their net profits.

Re:Drop in the bucket

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Nividia posted sales of USD 892.7 million.

So they offer to settle for $850 thousand?

0.1% of their sales???

Were all of their sales a result of price fixing? The article says it's about stuff ordered from their site between certain dates.

Re:Drop in the bucket

[Pulzar]

I'd say that says pretty loud and clear that there wasn't much of a case here, and they paid some symbolic sum to make it go away instead of wasting the time and money on lawyers to fight it. Whoever agreed to it must've thought the same, otherwise they'd never agree to such a small settlement.

Re:Drop in the bucket

[kesuki]

that's mainly because of a glut of buggy worthless quad core processors that don't end in '50s' and having trouble getting their dies shrunk. intel is down to 45nm and amd just finally got 65nm parts working right!

but with benchmark makers rigging their tests who can tell if intel are really faster than amd. " A VIA Nano CPU has had its CPUID changed from the original VIA to fake GenuineAMD and GenuineIntel. An improvement of, respectively, 10% and 47% of the score was seen" http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/01/1152237

although some posters there claimed that the discrepancy was the fault of Intel's compiler, which automatically optimizes programs for genuineIntel, the only weird bit is getting 10% faster as genuine AMD, which the intel compiler wouldn't normally do..

Not Proven Innocent??

[Calibax]

From TFA: "However, it's interesting that neither company has been proved innocent in this case, with the claims being dismissed out of court instead."

Silly me. I thought you had to be proven guilty, at least in the USA. Is the reporter that dumb or is he trying to put a slant on this?

Frankly, it sounds to me like there's no case to answer, and this is just a quick way to make it go away. If there had been any sort of case the settlement costs would have been in the $100+ million range, not $112,000 to the plaintiffs and $1.7 million for the class (which I presume will mostly go to the lawyers).

Re:Not Proven Innocent??

[corsec67]

For a civil case, the 2 parties can settle without a ruling from the judge.

At this point that is the only way that the RIAA has had any success.

Re:Not Proven Innocent??

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly me. I thought you had to be proven guilty, at least in the USA.

Tell that to 80% of the people in gitmo...

Re:Not Proven Innocent??

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not dumb. In the USA, innocent until proven guilty only applies to criminal charges. This was a civil charge in which the burden often lies on the accused to prove innocence.

Re:Not Proven Innocent??

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also the fact that both companies fab at TSMC. Chip sizes at similar GFLOPS are similar (only so many ways you can design a floating point adder...).

So same chip supplier, similar sizes give similar prices. Does it really require collusion?

Re:Not Proven Innocent??

[Anonymous Coward]

Same size? err, no.

The latest GTX280 has 1400 million transistors using 65 nm, and NVIDIA gets 105 chips from a silicon blank.

The latest 4870 has 956 million transistors using 55 nm, and AMD gets 220 chips from a silicon blank.

Not in the same ballpark.

Re:Not Proven Innocent??

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's not true in this case. You can't prove a negative, i.e. that there was no collusion.

The plaintiff has the burden of proving that there was collusion. I seriously doubt he would have settled for a $100k if he thought he could prove his case. This was a speculative attempt to shakedown the companies. It failed.

Re:Not Proven Innocent??

[westlake]

Silly me. I thought you had to be proven guilty, at least in the USA.
.

In a civil case "guilt" or "innocence" has no meaning. The issues are defined simply in terms of personal and financial responsibility under the law - and a case ends in a "finding" for the plaintiff or the defendant based on the weight of the evidence.

Re:Not Proven Innocent??

[petermgreen]

Silly me. I thought you had to be proven guilty, at least in the USA.
Only in a criminal court!

Afaict civil courts can punish people/companies based on merely it being marginally more likely that they were in the wrong than in the right.

Re:Not Proven Innocent??

[kesuki]

in this case, the price of the lawyers was $1.7 million for writing a letter, and getting a court date.

not bad for what 4 billable hours? in this economy who can beat getting paid $425,000 an hour?

Did I miss something?

[Sj0]

I must've missed something. Nvidia and ATI GPUs are excellent counterparts, the two most powerful cards available, and if prices are high, it's because nobody else can create a card for less.

Honestly though, I can buy an amazing video card for less than 100 bucks. I can't buy an equivilent video card from Matrox, S3, Via, or Intel at all, let alone for 100 bucks. How are they fixing prices?

Re:Did I miss something?

[ShakaUVM]

A while back the NVIDIA president emailed ATI and said that they should get together some time to set prices for video cards.

That's, you know, illegal and stuff.

Generally speaking, if businessmen are going to do something like that they just meet in person so there's no paper trail. Oil companies been doing it this way for years, and I know the owners of some of the local businesses meet together to arrange "things".

I'm surprised that they got off so lightly. But then again, Microsoft got away from their antitrust battle by giving away nothing more than some coupons for their overpriced software.

Re:Did I miss something?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except they didn't. The businessmen talked about common branding and creating a better image of PC discrete graphics cards compared to integrated products. The only mentions of price were about STOCK prices.

Stop spreading disinformation.

Re:Did I miss something?

[Calibax]

Would you like to provide a reference for this remark?

Re:Did I miss something?

[mikael]

For a period of time Nvidia and ATI agreed to boost the market value of GPU's by arranging for similarly powered products to be sold at the same price.

The following PDF document describes the entire case: GRAPHICS PROCESSING UNITS
ANTITRUST LITIGATION

Copies of the E-mails are here E-mail evidence of price fixing

Both of us have spent the last three years trying to bring the perceived value of our products up to the level of Intel. The "GPU" category is clean and has served us well that way. We both have increased the price of our high end product several fold over the last 4 years while Intel's high end prices have more than halved. Creating another category serves to work contradictory to that. How does one cleanly position it versus a GPU and a CPU?? It will tear down what we have both built.

There are now at least 51 different anti-trust lawsuits in the pipeline

The usual punishment will be a large fine - maybe a donation to charity - donating money to a charity allowing poor families to buy GPU pc's for Christmas or education.

Re:Did I miss something?

[ShakaUVM]

A scan of one email:
http://media.bestofmicro.com/0/G/156832/original/Picture%203.png
Taken from:
http://www.tomshardware.com/gallery/amd-nvidia-price-fixing,0201--4553----jpg-.html

Best line from the bunch: "We need to stop beating each other up in the OEM space".

Re:Did I miss something?

[ShakaUVM]

>>The only mentions of price were about STOCK prices.

Huh, they have OEM stock prices now?

Lol.

(See the reference to the other poster below.)

Re:Did I miss something?

[Anonymous Coward]

Patents?

Re:Did I miss something?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting how the evidence seems to always come from the nVidia side, with people reporting their talks with ATI. I mean, it's very convenient for nVidia that those come out when nVidia sits on a mountain of cash, isn't it?
They can pay scraps and ATI is forced to pay the same.

Re:Did I miss something?

[Pulzar]

From those emails, it seems to me like they discussed using the name GPU to build the market together, there were no discussions about pricing. And, from the emails, ATI guys were saying that they wanted to use the name VPU, instead. I don't see anything particular damning in there. The ATI response to your quote above was something along the lines of "we thought R300 is more than just a graphics chip, so we wanted to go with VPU to distinguish it", it wasn't "yeah, you're right, let's price fix".

Re:Did I miss something?

[mikael]

On page 14 of the PDF document there is a graph showing the variation in pricing between graphics boards of equivalent performance.

Between the time the Geforce FX 5800 ($399 5/2003) / Radeon 9800 ($399 5/5/2003) came out and the
time the GeForce 7900 GS ($200 9/6/2006 ) / Radion X1650 Pro ($199 9/15/2006), there was less than $1 variation in prices. At the same time, the variation in release dates was also substantially lower than outside this period of time.

Price drops

[santiagoanders]

With such rapid price drops on graphics cards I thought competition between ATI and Nvidia was working. Why, I just bought a 9600GSO for $34 after rebate and live cashback (and free shpping - Newegg rocks!)

Re:Price drops

[kesuki]

thanks, newegg is fresh out of those. if you had said 'online' i probably could have inferred newegg, and gotten one myself! if only you had obfuscated your source!

Re:Bwahahahahaha!

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Gamers are phags. Chew on that, bitches!

As a heterosexual non-gamer who is on Slashdot anonymously calling people names on a Friday, you can pump your fist in victory!

Fuck Patent Attorneys

[Anonymous Coward]

This has no relation to the article. I simply wanted to state my hate for the current patent system and the patent attorneys who shamelessly allow their clients to file patents on everything. I would also like to express my hate toward the assholes that patented taking a shit, a eating food. Now I can't live without paying royalities. May the lawyers and assholes get struck down by the mighty hand of zeus.

Re:Fuck Patent Attorneys

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah!! And fuck chico to!!

And in other news.... (more car anaolgy)

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as all the other car companies finish biting the dust, Toyota and Honda will gladly sell you a vehicle.... for the starting price of an entry-level econobox at around $100K.

Re:And in other news.... (more car anaolgy)

[pecosdave]

That would be awesome, because in the wake of the extinction of the Detroit Dino's and the Japanese extortion will come the new generations of American cars sprouting up from the ashes that will put Toyota and Honda to shame, assuming the gubmint allows them companies to happen. There are several small / lesser known US auto makers with some damned cool cars that I would like to see take off. Most of them only make specialty/super cars, but if there were no dino competition the may change their market a bit.

Re:And in other news.... (more car anaolgy)

[pecosdave]

I'm about to leave for a few hours, so before I hear "What other manufacturers", look up Panoz and Vector. Not well known, and not in the current consumer price range, but they could possibly step up to the plate if needed.

Re:And in other news.... (more car anaolgy)

[LingNoi]

Seeing how the dollar is going it's probably going to cost that much to buy a car in the future anyway.

sooo...

[Taibhsear]

What does this mean for the customers that bought the products at the higher than they should have been prices? (ie. me. 8800gts g92) Do we get a refund or anything or do we get the shaft as always?

Re:sooo...

[sexconker]

shaft

So...

[AnalogyShark]

They must've had these 'secret meetings' awhile ago, because for as long as I can remember, the best graphics cards have always carried a hefty $200-400 price tag, depending on the particular age. I still remember picking up a Voodoo 5 5500 for a good $280. I just recently picked up a Geforce GTX 260 (the extra $120 for 2-3 FPS the 280 brings I just couldn't justify completely), which set me back a good $320.

Now unless 3dfx was in on this deal eight years ago, before Nvidia had even bought them out, well, I can't really see how things have changed all that much at all. $300 still gets you the near-highest grade card it always got you, and hell, $300 I think was worth more back then, it definately was if you were buying gas.

All in all, this just seems like another "McDoanld's coffee is too hot, it burned me, I'll sue you" case to me: someone looking to make a quick $100,000 by trying to defame a big company. And frankly the I would love if the graphics card industry got ahead of the curve of the gaming industry. I'm tired of games releasing that have no single-GPU possible way to max out their graphics at playable framerates (read as: Crysis Warhead), so the extra money towards R&D is hardly something I'm willing to complain about.

Re:So...

[sexconker]

?
High end cards typically debut at $600 now.
More if you want the one with the water block / bullshit.

You'll pay even more at "launch" when 4 random online shops get in on the first batch of 7 cards.

$300 is mid-range now. $300 becomes high end a few months after decent quantities of cards hit the market, and the rebates start rolling in.

Re:So...

[AnalogyShark]

I'd hardly consider $300 a mid range card. "Mid-range" cards are things like the Nvidia 8800 and 9800 even. (Sorry that most of my experience is with Nvidia, so I don't know what compares to those in ATI) Those have price tags well under $200 if you shop around. And yes, $600 is high end when the cards hit the market. Frankly if you're buying debut cards, you're just asking to get robbed, it's like asking for First Edition collectible cards. This was more aimed towards buying the latest cards in the market as it stands today, with the GTX 280 sorta reigning as the king card right now, with a price tag about $450 if you shop around.

Re:So...

[sexconker]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048+1069633099&Configurator=&Subcategory=48&description=&Ntk=&SpeTabStoreType=&Order=PRICED&srchInDesc=

As you can see, the first cards to hit around $~300 are the GTX 260s. The GTX 280s are high end. The 260 is a peg below it.

If you don't know Nvidia, all you need to know is for the past 4 generations is this:

8 = flagship.
x9xx > x8xx >> x6xx >> x5xx > x4xx >> x6xx > x0xx
Ultra > GTX > GT > GTS > [no special branding] > GS >>>> FX (fuuuuuuuck the FX series!!)
ABxx : CDxx :: (C-A) : (D-B)
X2 means there are 2 GPUs on a single board.

For example, the 6800 was the flagship of that generation. There was the Ultra, the GT, and I believe a vanilla for a short while. Then you had the 6600, 6200, etc.

Things got crazy with the 8800 series - we got Ultra, GT, GTX, GTS, and GTS2 (usually just branded as GTS).

There is a huge difference between the x8xx and x6xx chips. The 8800 blows the 8600 out of the water, just as the 6800 did to the 6600, and the 5800 FX did to the 5600 FX (though anything in the FX generation is shit).
The difference transcends generations. The 6800 will outperform the 7600, and would be a good match for the 8600 (video processing and other features aside, of course).

Sometimes nvidia ramps up yields and throws us a x9xx line, such as the 79xx series a while back, but these show only marginal improvements over the x8xx lines.

With the new number, (280, 260), just imagine they went from the 9xxx line to the 10xxx line.
The 280 would be the 10280, but decided to drop the first number designator. I suppose we'll be looking at the 380 in while, though I wonder if they'll stick with that when they realize that 360 will remind people of xbox 360.

ATI went from the 7xxx to the 8xxx to the 9xxx series. The 9800 Pro was the flagship. SE was the shitty edition, XT was the higher end version.

After 9xxx, ATI went to x800, x700, etc, all the way down to x300. Then they went to x1800, x1700, etc. Then then dropped the X and went to HD 2xxx etc. Then HD 3xxx and HD 4xxx.

The point of all this is that once you wade through the horriblenes, you can tell just from the model number whether it's a high, mid, or low end part.

An 8800 is high end from 2 years ago.
Today, it's the fool's mid end. Why buy that when you can get the 4850 (upper mid end, but great value/$) for similar levels of $?

$300 is mid-end.
If you count rebates (I don't), then maybe you can get a slightly better card, but it won't be high end, and you better go with evga to take advantage of their step-up program.

Wow.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Whoever said "Crime does not pay" clearly had blue collar crime in mind.

Billions

[Nom du Keyboard]

Make billions, pay millions. Sounds like a Wall Street CEO severance package.

Yea

[unity100]

thats why ati has been cutting prices like madmen. to fix them.

I'm all for it

[Anonymous Coward]

Price fixing encourages choice and variety and options.

Competing strictly on price seems to lower quality as companies race to the bottom.

It also creates stability in the market and allows companies to plan for the future.

Consider deregulation of the airlines. Before deregulation, the government was the fixed prices and controlled competition.

Now we have price wars the drive other airlines out of business and the quality of the travel experience has much declined.

gimme my money!

[DragonTHC]

I've bought plenty of GPUs from nVidia. I've paid a small fortune for them too.

I want my cut.

I believe it...

[blahplusplus]

... it seems since the advent of 3D cards they've held roughly at around $300-500, I remember paying $400 for a brand new voodoo/voodoo2 card when they first came out, it seems a little strange that prices have been eeking ever higher or have held all this time.