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.

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,

[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,

[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.

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.

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).

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: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: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.