ATI and NVIDIA under investigation!!???

Met-AL said:
Regulation. At least where I live, there is regulation to keep places like Wal Mart from selling gas for just above the wholesale price to run competition out of business. Filling stations are required to price gasoline at least a certain amount above wholesale prices.
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But even then, it's not the same everywhere. Try to get gas in New York City and then in who-knows-where Wyoming, and there will be a pretty substantial difference.
 
Met-AL said:
Regulation. At least where I live, there is regulation to keep places like Wal Mart from selling gas for just above the wholesale price to run competition out of business. Filling stations are required to price gasoline at least a certain amount above wholesale prices.
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i'm fairly certain that you can sell gas for as little as you want. i remember a few years ago a local gas station had a day when they sold it for $.99/gallon as a promotion of sorts. as i understand it, the reason gas prices are all comparable is due to regulations to prevent price gouging.
 
Sweet. I payed $450 for my 9800 Pro AIW. Prices do need to drop. I'm about to jump into console gaming since PC is so expensive.
 
They can use whatever prices they want as long as it's not taking advantage of an unfortunate situation. They can sell gas at $8 a gallon if they want but they better have been selling it that way for some time if any disaster hits.

I've also seen 10 cent gas around here during some promotions. Gas however is one of those weird markets that is well regulated since its a major part of the economy. While gamers would be feeling some withdraws if we didn't have our video cards, most people would get buy without them. Gas on the other hand most people require to go about their daily lives.
 
phide said:
For starters, video cards components are predominantly made from silicon, not silicone. The latter is a material used for breast implants and caulking.

To get to the meat of the subject, tell me the what the BOM is for this $650 video card (I assume you're talking about the 8800 GTX?). Tell me how much it costs to manufacture such a "crappy" 681 million transistor chip like G80, then detail the price of all other components. Then, go a step further for me, if you would entertain me, and let me know how much money is expended when you develop a piece of technology like this over a four year time span, because that's money that must be recouped eventually. I don't need exact figures, but ballparks with some sort of evidence would be great.

I hope you'll take the time to enlighten me, sir.
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Chances are that the price for the chips (gpu and ram) is about two hundred dollars plus the expense of maybe 10-20 dollars for the rest of the components. Considering the rest of the components consist of milled aluminum/copper, paint, dye, stickers, "silicon" (without the e cause I'm a spelling nazi too), caps, resistors, etc. Then there is the R&D component of the cost plus the packaging and the shipping. All-in-all I'd say it's about three hundred dollars per card at the very very max. With a better estimate around 200-250.

Graphics chip: This looks like a tie. Microsoft worked with ATI Technologies to develop a chip that costs about US$141, according to iSuppli. Sony teamed with ATI rival Nvidia for its chip, which could cost US$120 to US$150, according to Dean McCarron at Mercury Research. Since the two chips are based on the high-end PC chips from the two companies, and since ATI and Nvidia are such fierce competitors, it's a safe bet that the two are roughly equal here.
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Memory: Looks like a tie, but Sony may take a slight hit here. The Xbox 360 will come with 512MB of GDDR (graphics double data rate memory, meant for handling graphics-intensive programs like games). The PS3 will come with 256MB of 700MHz GDDR 3 memory and 256MB of XDR memory. Bob Merritt of Semico Research says it's safe to assume that both types of memory will sell for a 100 percent premium over conventional DDR2 memory in 2006, dropping to a 50 percent premium the following year. A 256-megabit DDR2 chip sells for about US$2.46 on the wholesale market, he said, leading to a price of about US$79 for 512MB of GDDR (here's the math: 2.46 x 2 x 2 x 8. There are eight bits in a byte).

iSuppli and Merrill Lynch put the cost of memory at, respectively, US$65 and US$50. The average between the three is US$65.
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http://www.cnet.com.au/games/ps3/0,239035763,240060605,00.htm

That source is for the ATI chip that the ps3 is running. I'd imagine the prices are in about the same range.

~Adam
 
All I am getting from this, is, the DOJ along with the federal governement. Are just wanting to cry about competitive business. With in the last two years the PC industry has exploded. So, along with the technical advances comes a higher price, then factor in steady inflation, and, well. You do the math. I don't think that nVidia and AMD+ATi can afford to raise priceses so high, seeing that they are the only highend graphics companies...
 
Proxy said:
I don't think that nVidia and AMD+ATi can afford to raise priceses so high, seeing that they are the only highend graphics companies...
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huh?
 
yes,

nvidia and ati hold the monopoly on the high end gpu market,

and when you have only 2 companies in this market segment , the best way to maximize profits is to engage in collusion and fix the prices,

why do you think last few gen video cards are within same performance range, even though they have totally different architectures? +-5%?
 
Nitpick - when only a few companies dominate an entire market (3 here) it is called an Oligopoly, not a Monopoly. If it's true they are being subpoena'd for collusion / price fixing, well that falls in line with one of the greatest risks of having a market Oligopoly.

Personally, I can't begrudge a company for taking what the market will give in some situations. IMHO there are two different scenarios;

1) Fuel price fixing - Gasoline is a product that all walks of life use. Rich or poor, most ppl have cars and need to get to work. Price fixing in this scenario, in a gas shortage, I do not believe is right, since a good majority of the population that needs to get to work may not be able to afford it.

2) Gaming Vid Cards - only a small portion of this country or any other buys top of the line video cards. It's a luxury item, not a necessity (yes, gasoline isn't a MUST i suppose, but it is more ingrained in our society at all levels of income). If you ask me, NVIDIA and ATI can charge what they want and I have no problem with it. Until a competitor decides to come along and battle them on the volume/low pricing front we won't see a price war per se.
 
i think the prices are acceptable, for the performance we get.


i think circuity city is the real ripoff on video card prices.
 
pRS317 said:
i'm fairly certain that you can sell gas for as little as you want. i remember a few years ago a local gas station had a day when they sold it for $.99/gallon as a promotion of sorts. as i understand it, the reason gas prices are all comparable is due to regulations to prevent price gouging.
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Wal Mart put up a filling station here a few years back at one of their Super WalMarts, and they are selling gas at the most, only a cent cheaper then everyone else in town. It's because right here where I live, not neccessarily where you live, there are regulations regarding how much you can price your gasoline at. Now, if I remember correctly from the article in the newspaper (this was 5yrs ago), I think it was 11cents above wholesale is the minimum you could charge. This regulation is there to keep some one from sellng gas at a loss just to run the competition out of business, while relying on a side business to stay afloat.

Now, I know that there is no regulation for the high price. Right after the World Trade Center attacks, some, not all, filling stations were pricing gas at $4 to $5 a gallon for a day or so. Most apologized and offered a refund to customers the next day or so that brought in a receipt.
 
More Details;

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2066731,00.asp


AMD, Nvidia Receive DOJ Antitrust Subpoenas
12.01.06 Total posts: 1


By Bryan Gardiner
Two of the largest names in the graphics chip industry were both hit with antitrust subpoenas over the past two days by the Department of Justice.

ADVERTISEMENT In a statement released on Friday, chip maker Nvidia said it had received a subpoena from the San Francisco Office of the DOJ's Antitrust Division regarding possible violations relating to the company's graphics processing units and cards.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), who entered the graphics chip industry this past July when it purchased Nvidia rival ATI for $5.6 billion, admitted to receiving a similar subpoena yesterday, also relating to antitrust violations.

In both cases, the DOJ has not made any specific allegations against the companies. In separate statements, both AMD and Nvidia said they would cooperate fully with the DOJ's investigation.

While ExtremeTech tried to reach both Nvidia and AMD for further comment, neither company returned our calls by deadline. Similarly, when asked for more information on the subpoenas, the DOJ said that it does not comment on active investigations.


Over the past few years, the DOJ has been embarking on a broad antitrust campaign against price fixing in the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) industry. While that investigation did not affect Nvidia or AMD, the DOJ did eventually fine four DRAM companies, including a former-executive from U.S.-based Micron Corp., who pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges.

For Nvidia, news of Friday's subpoena marks the end of a troubling week. On Wednesday, the company said it is restating six years of earnings due to an internal investigation into stock-options backdating.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Santa Clara-based graphics chip maker said it is making the restatement due to faulty accounting of employee and executive stock options. Despite the erroneous accounting, Nvidia said the audit committee of its board had found no evidence of any attempt to deceive investors, regulators, or to inflate Nvidia's earnings.

According to Nvidia, the filing will take a total of $190.2 million in previously unreported charges for compensation expenses and $9.4 million in compensation taxes for fiscal years 2000 through 2006.
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CleanSlate said:
Chances are that the price for the chips (gpu and ram) is about two hundred dollars plus the expense of maybe 10-20 dollars for the rest of the components.
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I'll bed to differ here, and I don't quite like your source, because it doesn't actually talk about G80 at all (though it does give us a few hints). When you said "$650 card", I assumed you meant the 8800 GTX, as that is the only card that has an attached MSRP of ~$649 at this moment (others are priced at $599). In addition, ATi's Xenos/C1 is not NVIDIA's G80, nor is the graphics solution as complex as a full-blown add-in card like the 8800 GTX.

For starters, Xenos, which your source has pegged at $141 a pop, is said to be 223 million transistors, with another ~100 million transistors dedicated to the eDRAM and FSAA logic. This pales in comparison to the 681 million transistors alone for G80, not to mention the external on-board display chip, NVIO, which is estimated at 80 million transistors on a 110nm process. Both G80 and Xenos are built on a 90nm process, so the Xenos die size is obviously much smaller, and more chips can be produced per wafer. This is an important cost factor.

To put it very bluntly, G80 and NVIO alone consist of roughly 2.3 times as many transistors as Xenos and its associated eDRAM/logic.

Secondly, the X360 packs slower, cheaper GDDR3, and uses 50% less memory than the 8800 GTX (768MB).

Thirdly, a video card is a complete video processing component. It combines a GPU, VRAM, display output components (for the 8800 series cards, an entirely separate chip), misc. components related to power and all of the other necessary components (DVI connectors, power connectors, complex copper/aluminum-hybrid heat pipe heat sinks and fans) common with most high-end video cards. You mentioned these items, but I do believe you're slightly mistaken as to their costs.

We've talked about all of these physical components, and have yet to talk about retail in-the-box components. Combine the card that AIBs buy from NVIDIA or ATi, then add DVI-VGA adaptors, S-video cables, RCA cables, power cable extenders, PCIe power connector adaptors, printed manuals, bundled OEM software and bundled games, anti-static bags and the price of the box itself (generally all custom boxes with elaborate, high-quality printed sleeves). Then you may also have various other stocking stuffers like custom stickers, case badges and, in some cases, T-shirts from companies like BFG.

THEN you have AIB expenses, probably the most costly of which is warranty fulfillment. Many companies offer horrid warranties on their products because providing good warranty service is tremendously expensive. Many AIBs, however, offer pretty damn excellent warranties on their products these days, and this is not cheap. You also have all of the other expenses necessary for the basic operation of a business, and these expenses are certainly not just written off.

Now, you hardly even touched on the expenses entailed in R&D. NVIDIA spent four years (according to them) designing what is likely the single-most advanced graphics processing unit ever made. That's no small sum. In addition, you have all of NVIDIA's basic operating expenses, and these expenses do not total to a petty sum.

So, getting back to brass tacks here, do you reasonably expect that these companies can break even by selling the $649 8800 GTX at $200-250, and do you still believe that NVIDIA and ATi chiefs should "hang" for their disgusting attempts to turn a profit?
 
SO for the last 2-3 years of profit .. can't cover the release of 2 video cards? Nvidia last I saw was pretty damn profitable the last 2 years.
 
phide said:
I'll bed to differ here, and I don't quite like your source, because it doesn't actually talk about G80 at all (though it does give us a few hints). When you said "$650 card", I assumed you meant t .....

.......So, getting back to brass tacks here, do you reasonably expect that these companies can break even by selling the $649 8800 GTX at $200-250, and do you still believe that NVIDIA and ATi chiefs should "hang" for their disgusting attempts to turn a profit?
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+1

I am going to throw this out too

I am going to bet that the Companies making the boards are making a profit on the units. BUT that does not mean NVIDIA is making any money on the first round of GPU's.

You have to think, this is an entirely new Architecture that will sustain NVIDIA for the next 3-5 years. All of the R&D Money that went in to this is a long term investment over the lifetime of the platform, not one particular product.

NVIDIA might be selling the GPU’s at cost for now to the OEMs and Board Partners to get the platform out and then will profit when the production ramps up and subsequent versions of the GPU’s appear.

Think of it like how Microsoft Lost money on the Xbox for a long while, but made up for it with huge profits from everything related.

I am going to bet NVIDIA made a LOT more money on the GeForce 2MX than the GeForce 2 GTS.
 
The top end flagship products will always come with a premium for that kind of performance, and it takes a lot of effort to squeeze out those last drops.

But in spite of the fact that the high end cards are so expensive at retail, the vast majority of the profits come from much cheaper mid-to-low end cards. I'd hesitate to jump to any conclusions on this investigation, because for all we know, it may be something completely unrelated.

Now as I read the article, what do I see? The investigation is about "anticompetitive" practices. The first thing that comes to my mind is that the concern isn't about high price-fixing, but about keeping other companies out of the market, which is certainly a possibility considering the total duopoly ATI and NVIDIA have over the add-in card market.

Intel doesn't really apply since integrated graphics is a basic chipset choice, and Intel does offer chipsets without integrated graphics, and I haven't heard any concerns that Intel was forcefeeding its buyers integrated graphics chips...
 
phide said:
I'll bed to differ here, and I don't quite like your source, because it doesn't actually talk about G80 at all (though it does give us a few hints). When you said "$650 card", I assumed you meant the 8800 GTX, as that is the only card that has an attached MSRP of ~$649 at this moment (others are priced at $599). In addition, ATi's Xenos/C1 is not NVIDIA's G80, nor is the graphics solution as complex as a full-blown add-in card like the 8800 GTX.

For starters, Xenos, which your source has pegged at $141 a pop, is said to be 223 million transistors, with another ~100 million transistors dedicated to the eDRAM and FSAA logic. This pales in comparison to the 681 million transistors alone for G80, not to mention the external on-board display chip, NVIO, which is estimated at 80 million transistors on a 110nm process. Both G80 and Xenos are built on a 90nm process, so the Xenos die size is obviously much smaller, and more chips can be produced per wafer. This is an important cost factor.

To put it very bluntly, G80 and NVIO alone consist of roughly 2.3 times as many transistors as Xenos and its associated eDRAM/logic.

Secondly, the X360 packs slower, cheaper GDDR3, and uses 50% less memory than the 8800 GTX (768MB).

Thirdly, a video card is a complete video processing component. It combines a GPU, VRAM, display output components (for the 8800 series cards, an entirely separate chip), misc. components related to power and all of the other necessary components (DVI connectors, power connectors, complex copper/aluminum-hybrid heat pipe heat sinks and fans) common with most high-end video cards. You mentioned these items, but I do believe you're slightly mistaken as to their costs.

We've talked about all of these physical components, and have yet to talk about retail in-the-box components. Combine the card that AIBs buy from NVIDIA or ATi, then add DVI-VGA adaptors, S-video cables, RCA cables, power cable extenders, PCIe power connector adaptors, printed manuals, bundled OEM software and bundled games, anti-static bags and the price of the box itself (generally all custom boxes with elaborate, high-quality printed sleeves). Then you may also have various other stocking stuffers like custom stickers, case badges and, in some cases, T-shirts from companies like BFG.

THEN you have AIB expenses, probably the most costly of which is warranty fulfillment. Many companies offer horrid warranties on their products because providing good warranty service is tremendously expensive. Many AIBs, however, offer pretty damn excellent warranties on their products these days, and this is not cheap. You also have all of the other expenses necessary for the basic operation of a business, and these expenses are certainly not just written off.

Now, you hardly even touched on the expenses entailed in R&D. NVIDIA spent four years (according to them) designing what is likely the single-most advanced graphics processing unit ever made. That's no small sum. In addition, you have all of NVIDIA's basic operating expenses, and these expenses do not total to a petty sum.

So, getting back to brass tacks here, do you reasonably expect that these companies can break even by selling the $649 8800 GTX at $200-250, and do you still believe that NVIDIA and ATi chiefs should "hang" for their disgusting attempts to turn a profit?
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You made some good points about the complexity of the products but it's obvious that you didn't read what I said. Obviously I meant that if it were the case that they were purposefully gouging the market (or keeping others out of it) and this was found to be the case then I'd hope that whomever is responsible would hang for it. I don't care what company or person was doing this, it's a terrible business practice to monopolize and it's in fact illegal.

I in no way made a solidified claim that it IS happening. I left it open as a possibility which is more than some have done. I merely stated an opinion.

Perhaps you can show me some evidence as to what the 8800 series cost to develop since you seem to be knowledgeable about the inner workings of how things are priced in today's market.

And what's your estimate of how much each card would cost to make including each component?

~Adam
 
Quite honestly, I have no clue how much the 8800 GTX costs to produce. I have my own ballpark floating about in my brain, but I have no data or evidence to back it up, so I won't share it here. I can step back, look at the broad picture and make an estimate, but it wouldn't really have any basis in reality. Until we see some fairly accurate details, we should hold off on any accusations.

As for your opinion that price fixing, it did seem like you were insinuating that price fixing is a reasonable accusation, and it seemed like you based your opinion solely on emotion. It's certainly possible that there are some nefarious things happening at NVIDIA/ATi, but, like I said, I don't see any reason for the making the accusation or assuming that any similar accusations are reasonable.

In your own words, sir:
CleanSlate said:
To say that there is no reason for accusations of price fixing is to be blind to the fact that one piece of crappy silicone costs over $650 and the fact that the technology is cheaper than ever to produce.
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In any case, we have a pretty clear picture about what the subpoenas were concerning now, and it doesn't seem as if they are in any way directed at any NVIDIA/ATi wrongdoing. I imagine we'll get this machine rolling again next time we see some subpoenas.
 
Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.

Is a 10 carat diamond really worth $20,000? Is an Enzo ferrari really worth $1 million? Is movie popcorn really worth $5? If advertising fully covers the cost of TV, why is my cable not free?
 
Okay, second time. Firefox crashed out on me there.

The Inq states that summons were issued by Trong Nguyen, on behalf of himself and others, against NVIDIA, ATi (and thusly AMD). The only reference I could find to a "Trong Nguyen" is interesting -- according to a Tom's Hardware article, a Le Trong Nguyen was former assistant vice president of marketing at Trident, which was a small-time graphics company that tanked in the late 90's ('98, if I recall). I can't find any more recent mentions of Nguyen past 1997 or so, which leads me to believe he is not working for a semi-rival company like S3.

These allegations don't make any sense at all to me at this point. Is Trong Nguyen mentioned in the Inq article the former Trident assistant VP or marketing, or did Faud and the gang go for another round of "make up the news" today?

I suspect the latter, but if the former is true, these allegations seem way off base.

EDIT: Okay, some more info on Trident, which is still in business. In 2003, Trident pulled out of the PC graphics market, but only partially. Trident merged with SiS and XGI (to some degree) in that year. For those not in the know, XGI has been kicking around their Volari graphics cards, which have a present market share of roughly zero.

If Nguyen is still in a position in the marketing department at Trident/XGI, why is he filing suits? And why, if XGI is looking to tap the high-end AIB graphics market, would they attempt to stop NVIDIA/ATi's so-called price fixing schemes? Are these guys just a bunch of dickless wonders attempting to drive competitor stock prices down with frivelous allegations?
 
Now we need to have an investigation as to why so many people continue to buy PCs with Intel integrated graphics when they are clearly too shitty to play anything but the most basic of games.

How many times have you had to explain to someone why their brand new computer won't play the latest game? I'm thinking that most of the people on this board have had this conversation at least once, and many have had it more times than they care to count.

And still the masses buy them, over and over again.

I'm surprised that Intel and SiS *haven't* been sued for releasing such utter crap.
 
Caffeinated said:
Now we need to have an investigation as to why so many people continue to buy PCs with Intel integrated graphics when they are clearly too shitty to play anything but the most basic of games.

How many times have you had to explain to someone why their brand new computer won't play the latest game? I'm thinking that most of the people on this board have had this conversation at least once, and many have had it more times than they care to count.

And still the masses buy them, over and over again.

I'm surprised that Intel and SiS *haven't* been sued for releasing such utter crap.
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not everyone needs uber grafix!111!. most people just diddle around online and use office and such. no reason to piss out $300 worth of tech to watch shit on youtube.
 
Martyr said:
not everyone needs uber grafix!111!. most people just diddle around online and use office and such. no reason to piss out $300 worth of tech to watch shit on youtube.
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Uh, no, not $300 worth. ATI and NVidia both have integrated chipsets that are better than Intel's crap, though, and last I checked, Intel is the leader in integrated graphics. A Geforce 6200 can be had off of Newegg for ~$35, and I dare say that would be better than Intel's onboard crap. There are also niceties like good DVD playback, and that thing called Vista coming up that require something better than integrated. Sooner or later, someone is going to wonder why they can't run Aero Glass on their 6 month old box.

When I read this earlier in the week, my first thought was "No, they can't be doing price fixing, because of the technology advances" yadda yadda yadda.

The more I think about it, though, the more I wonder. It is certainly interesting that the first time someone mentions ATI or NVidia, though, the first reaction is "$300 uber-graphics".
 
Lord of Shadows said:
I knew $600 was overly pricey. Here's hoping that it's true! Quad sli all around ;o)
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Both companies are trying awfully hard to get us acclimated to $400 and $500 as "normal" highend prices. Now with crossfire and sli, we can get ripped off twice as badly. Woohoo for the enthusiast market.

It really makes me want to be a fan of either of these companies.
 
Caffeinated said:
There are also niceties like good DVD playback, and that thing called Vista coming up that require something better than integrated. Sooner or later, someone is going to wonder why they can't run Aero Glass on their 6 month old box.
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Aero Glass is not required. A fallback to a Windows 95-esque GUI wholly possible, and what most should generally use. DVD playback is also quite fine on Intel integrated chips. Playing HD content is another issue, though many chips play 720p just fine.

Not sure where you're going here, sir. Most Intel chips fit the needs of anyone, regardless of OS.
 
phide said:
Aero Glass is not required. A fallback to a Windows 95-esque GUI wholly possible, and what most should generally use. DVD playback is also quite fine on Intel integrated chips. Playing HD content is another issue, though many chips play 720p just fine.

Not sure where you're going here, sir. Most Intel chips fit the needs of anyone, regardless of OS.
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Let me just make sure I'm reading this right..
What you are saying is that the typical vista users should be prepared to "generally" use whatever Windows 95 "Classic" fallback theme is provided?

Unless I *COMPLETELY* totally misread or misunderstood you're statement, I'm going to have to ask you where you get you're ganj, because it must be a darn good source. Have you even tried Vista? You most certainly do not need a uber-man graphics card for vista. Sure, it won't hurt and you will get a little less eyecandy, but in my experience running the release candidates of Vista, it has not been so graphics intensive that I felt the need to go buy a new Alienware laptop. Furthermore, I seriously doubt that you would have to fall back to the "classic" style theme just because you have onboard video. Sure, if it were 2001 (RE: XP), you would be right; however this is a little different than XP.

Don't take it personally, but I'm going to have to pull the FUD (That's Fear-Uncertainty-&-Doubt for those of you not familiar with that acronym :p) card here.

*bitset hands you a small, stinky brown card which covered in FUD*
 
phide said:
Not sure where you're going here, sir. Most Intel chips fit the needs of anyone, regardless of OS.
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If you intend to argue that Intel integrated graphics are fine for anyone, then you certainly have the right to do so. I also have the right to laugh at you while you do so.

This is not what this thread is about, though.

Here is the Inq's take on it, if anyone believes a word that they say.
 
phide said:
<interesting post>
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That's some great digging, I do know Trident well as I have owned exactly two processors from them, one a VLB card back in the early 90's (that I upgraded to two whole megs of VRAM to play 11th Hour at high res!), and the circa 2003 notebook I am typing this on has one of their "Cyberblade XP" processors. It's disappointing that because they look to be squeezed out of a highly competitive market, they are trying to bring some heat on the big boys, almost seems punitive like you imply. And LOL @ "dickless wonders" :D
 
PliotronX said:
That's some great digging, I do know Trident well as I have owned exactly two processors from them, one a VLB card back in the early 90's (that I upgraded to two whole megs of VRAM to play 11th Hour at high res!), and the circa 2003 notebook I am typing this on has one of their "Cyberblade XP" processors. It's disappointing that because they look to be squeezed out of a highly competitive market, they are trying to bring some heat on the big boys, almost seems punitive like you imply.
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Trident goes back a long ways, but they were never high-end. Still, I remember 1993-94 when a 1MB DRAM 16-bit ISA bus Trident TVGA 8500 card was the best bang for the buck. Everybody wanted a card that could do at least 256 colors at a resolution of 1024x768, assuming your monitor wasn't limited to 640x480 or 800x600 (at those resolutions, 512k of RAM on a vid-card was enough for 256 colors). The 8500 was just a frame-buffer chip, but it worked reasonably well, though it was surpassed by chips like the Tseng Labs ET4000, and later chips like Cirrus Logic 5426. It also didn't cost much.

Trident continued in the entry-level video chip market for some time, surviving through VESA local bus, PCI, and into early AGP days. The Blade architecture was some of their final stuff. They never really had any true 3D capabilities, or at least not any more than what similar competitors like S3 had at the time (read: 98-early 2000's). They never put any heat on the big boys (ATI, nVidia, 3dfx, arguably Matrox at that time) or even the midrange boys (Rendition, PowerVR) even at the height of their existence; a better example of someone slowly being squeezed out might be 3dfx (though plenty of that was an implosion on their part) or Ageia, since ATI and nVidia have partnered with Havok for physics acceleration, reducing the viability of PhysX and making it less likely that developers will write code for it.
 
bitset said:
Furthermore, I seriously doubt that you would have to fall back to the "classic" style theme just because you have onboard video. Sure, if it were 2001 (RE: XP), you would be right; however this is a little different than XP.
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I use the standard Windows 95-esque Explorer theme on all of the machines at the office. It isn't necessary, but system-wide performance is better with the XP theme disabled entirely via services. Essentially nothing is offered from the switch from the bitmap-laced GUI to the non-bitmap-laced GUI, so why use it?

I never said that you have to use the fallback. Odds are, though, that if you can't run Aero Glass acceptably, you don't have a burly machine, and you should probably take the route that doesn't impart performance penalties, don't you agree?

I'm not sure why you've pulled the FUD card here, cowboy. Save those for the real fudsters.

Caffeinated said:
If you intend to argue that Intel integrated graphics are fine for anyone, then you certainly have the right to do so. I also have the right to laugh at you while you do so.
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Poorly phrased. I should have said they fit the needs of most.
 
So if it is discovered that there was price fixing, what would this ultimately mean for consumers?

Wouldn't this just mean that nVidia/AMD get fined, and then they have to raise costs anyway to cover the fact that they lost money due to the class action suit to begin with? I'm not asking this rhetorically, I'm asking it seriously.

Would there be any significant benefit to consumers?
 
Caffeinated said:
Would there be any significant benefit to consumers?
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No. You might get a small rebate, or an almost worthless coupon. But to make you feel better, a bunch of lawyers will probably end up making a lot of money because of this.
 
BladeVenom said:
No. You might get a small rebate, or an almost worthless coupon. But to make you feel better, a bunch of lawyers will probably end up making a lot of money because of this.
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+1, Class action lawsuites are nothing more than revenue generators for large law firms. The consumers rarely ever benefit from them more than a token ammount. At best, they can create new legislation or force a company to change a shady business practice.
 
Lord of Shadows said:
Cheaper prices, possibly free cash for us through class action.
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Hah, with their current market share, if they had to return money to all (or even a significant % of) their consumers, they would probably go bankrupt..
 
BladeVenom said:
No. You might get a small rebate, or an almost worthless coupon. But to make you feel better, a bunch of lawyers will probably end up making a lot of money because of this.
Click to expand...

TheBluePill said:
+1, Class action lawsuites are nothing more than revenue generators for large law firms. The consumers rarely ever benefit from them more than a token ammount. At best, they can create new legislation or force a company to change a shady business practice.
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This is what I thought, too (looks like those John Grisham books taught me something..LOL). Basically the only ones that gain anything are the lawyers. :(
 
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