ATI And Nvidia Under Antitrust Investigation

[Shawn Andrich]

ATI And Nvidia Under Antitrust Investigation

The Department of Justice has begun an investigation into ATI and Nvidia for price fixing. Both companies received subpoenas on December 1st.

With brand new video cards from either company entering the market at $500 US or more, allegations of conspiracy to fix prices have been made toward the popular graphic card makers. As part of their investigation, the DoJ has requested records dating back to the late 90's from both companies.

Allegations have been made that the defendants and co-conspirators "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." Executives from both groups are also accused of having secret meetings to discuss graphic card pricing, which according to the Inquirer [http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36258], would make them a cartel if convicted.

Both companies have said they will cooperate with the investigation, including AMD who recently bought ATI.

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[heavyfeul]

All I know is that GPU's are too damned expensive. If they find out that they have been in collusion with one another to jack up prices, I will really be pissed off. I might even consider giving up PC gaming if this turns out to be true. I mean it. Something like this really makes me angry. But, I will hold off judgment until the government has made their case. However, considering you can buy an entire computer (w/ monitor) retail for the price of a top of line GPU, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be true.

 

[Echolocating]

And with Nvidia?s SLI... ouch! What? I need 4 high-end graphics cards to run this game?

I think the price of cards will go down, but because you'll need to buy multiple cards per machine to run the high-end games... they'll have an easy justification to still make too much money.

 

[heavyfeul]

On a related note...

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2071520,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532