Nvidia and ATi accused of price fixing

[scaR]

The US Department of Justice served both major computer graphics companies with federal subpoenas a week ago. Documents have been requested from as far back as 1990. There have even been allegations of secret high level meetings bewteen top executives. The charge?

"They have engaged in a contract combination, trust or conspiracy, the effect of which was to raise the prices at which they sold graphics processing units and cards to artificially inflated levels." - US DoJ

Were these two warring companies only pretending to provide competition while operating as a cartel to extort money from unsuspecting consumers? Only time will tell. The fall out from this could be huge.

[source: http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/08/nvidia-amd-in-hot-water-for-potential-price-fixing/ ]

[LARUTO]

i smell insider dealing/trading

[Xecutiona]

this would be hard to proove. unless they document al of their meetings etc...then they're messed up.

and even so, im just playing the innocent here, arent companies given the right to sell their product at whatever price they choose?

[phoenix31tt]

nah... there is something in the us constitution about that (jus like laws against "monopolisation" if i spell it right...

[LARUTO]

yes and no, while they could do what they want with their product they cannot fool the public into believing that they are 'adjusting' their prices to compete with the opposition when in reality they are actually collaborating with them.

[Xecutiona]

i understand that. in trinidad we have laws against cartels also, but at least something is done in the states...here we have alot of cartels sigh...i wouldnt even name them as that would be accusation and i really cant proove alot while im over here lol

[scaR]

Cartels and monopolies are two different things.

[ecktt]

I could so easily believe that there is a price fixing going on. With all other products (HDs, processors, mother boards, etc) prices have remained relatively constant while their spec have grown. Vidoe cards on the other hand have jumped in price brakets. I remember buying my state of the art Voodoo II for 150 USD. Then my Cutting edge TNT2 ultra for 200US. Fast forward to today where my next video card is going to cost 650USD.

[Xecutiona]

how long do you think this would take? and after these proceedings are over do you think that we would be getting low priced vidcards?

[phoenix31tt]

it might actually be worse of for use for awhile... if the are ordered to pay fines etc... then they might be lil brookish... thus bringing out cards at a slighly slower rate but i dunno

[ecktt]

When you think about it, a Video card is a self contain computer. A processor that is somewhat general purpose now and a fair amount of ram, all on its own self contained motherboard. It takes Input from the AGP/PCI-E bus and outputs to the DVI/D-sub ports.

May be I wan being hasty when I said i think the Video card manufactures were screewing us over. Today's video cards make my old voodoo look like a toy truck and so prob cost a hell of a lot more to develop.

[trinithemc]

Some price fixing goes on surely , some cards slated at X aren't worth the money, remember the 9800 pros went for 150 USD for awhile and made ATI profit, but the 9800xt was basically the same thing, went for 2x the price .
. But ATI-Nvidia competition has done us good, they spend hundreds of millions in R&D and make sure that the latest 3d technology is available to the low end market, albeit slow.
IF this turns into cheaper cards , then yay for us.. 8800gtx for 200 FTW?