Intel and AMD Settle Antitrust, Patent Lawsuits

Kohenkatz writes "Intel has agreed to pay $1.25 billion to AMD. In return, AMD will drop its lawsuits about patent and antitrust complaints. The two companies released this joint statement: 'While the relationship between the two companies has been difficult in the past, this agreement ends the legal disputes and enables the companies to focus all of our efforts on product innovation and development.' The press release also says, 'Under terms of the agreement, AMD and Intel obtain patent rights from a new 5-year cross license agreement,' and that 'Intel and AMD will give up any claims of breach from the previous license agreement.'"

Comments

Re:What AMD needs to do - and quickly

[Disgruntled Goats]

And the fact that Core and Core 2 kick AMD's ass from her to sundown.

Re:Only $1.25 Billion?

[Enderandrew]

I build a lot of systems for people. I've been using AMD since the K6 line. However, my current desktop I went with a Dragon platform.

I got a Phenom II X4 940, a 790GX board, and a Radeon HD 4850 (Saphire).

First off, I can't get the box to see 4 sticks of DDR2 1066. My buddy literally built the same hardware off my recommendations, and he ran into the same issue.

All 4 sticks work fine individually. All 4 memory slots work fine individually. I can get the 4 sticks to work together on an Intel board (I borrowed a work PC to test).

I swapped the motherboard for another brand, and has the same problem. I went to a better power supply and had the same problem. Then I see a bunch of people posting on AMD's forums about a specific bug with the 940 not handling 4 sticks of 1066. Tons of people are reporting this. I call AMD tech support, who keeps cutting me off to insist there is no way possible that the processor can affect the memory.

I keep telling them the processor contains the memory controller. But there is zero way the processor can be responsible. Tech support starts yelling at me. I call back the next day, and get the same answers. Even worse, they insist I must have cheap memory. I bought Kingston. They insist it must be my motherboard. I thought them I'm on my second motherboard from another manufacturer. The only consistency is that they both use AMD silicon for the chipset. Again, AMD Tech Support told me there is zero chance they could have anything to do with it, and they wouldn't consider swapping the proc.

Even worse, the second rep told me that AMD doesn't recommend buying parts from Biostar, Foxconn or Kingston. They said Kingston memory isn't on their approved list. Kingston for crying out loud. Way to throw your partners under the bus!

Combine that with my first Radeon HD 4850 (built directly by AMD/ATI via Sapphire) was DOA. My second one has also stopped working. (It only works in VESA mode, but never when a driver is loaded in XP x64, Windows 7, or openSUSE. Apparnetly hardware acceleration is completely busted on it).

Next, I have 4 SATA drives in RAID 1 with 2 logical drives. My first logical drive says there is a failure. Yet, Seagate diagnostics can't find a problem with the second drive. I RMA the drive regardless (at a cost of $20 to me!) and put a second drive in. There is no option to rebuild the array, nor does it happen automatically.

I call AMD again (the AMD name is all over the RAID tool on their chipset) and they say they don't make the RAID tool, again, despite it saying Copyright AMD all over the place. I call Foxconn who say it is just part of the chipset they get from AMD, and they won't support it.

I call AMD back who insists I must destroy the LD, and recreate a new one. I explain that defeats the whole concept of a RAID if I can't rebuild/repair it. And they say they have no knowledge of their own RAID tool.

I did end up wiping the logical drive, but I'm pissed. I bought a second power supply that I didn't need, which didn't fix the issue. I've swapped parts left and right. I still can only use 2 sticks of memory, and now my second video card is dead. ATI won't do an RMA directly (thanks for that) and NewEgg won't let me do a second RMA from the same invoice. I just ate $160 on a dead card.

And again, AMD tech support has been nothing but rude to me, treating me like an idiot. I'm a fucking Systems Engineer. I also build at least 10 rigs a year for family and friends. Bad products plus even worse support is a bitter pill to swallow.

Even worse, Foxconn and Biostar both independently told me they have also noted that the 940 does in fact have an issue where often it can't recognize 4 sticks of 1066. Asus also had a note on their site about it. And tons of users reported on the AMD forums. But again, AMD refuses to own their issue and do anything about it. I'm pretty pissed to the point that I may boycott AMD, even if it means buying from Intel, who is guilty of anti-competitive practices.