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

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???

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: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: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: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.