BAM, FTC investigating INTEL monopoly.

[Wiggy McShades]

I remember that old story. HP said they were experiencing slow sales and would have to pay taxes on unsold inventory. They more than likely accepted what they thought they could sell. Free processors or not, inventory that's not moving is a NO NO!

You're talking, that's not being a Fanboy IMHO! I'm not throwing that term around that easily. Some folks use it against people they have personal issues with as well.

Well i had no idea they had to pay taxes on inventory that was sitting there. I'm more just disagreeing with those saying it would be impossible for amd to ship more products if they had needed weather or not the slow sales were just to the economy at the time or intel. Thats just my opinion at least. Apparently the HP thing has more to the story than most websites are reporting about ATM. Maybe this is the reason alot of the coutries are finding intel guilty? They aren't taking into account that over all computer sales have dropped in the past years. Who knows I personally didn't think of that until now.

[Donnie27]

Predictions:

Intel fanboy's will vehemently claw and scrape for any argument and news and history for why they are innocent.

At the same time the Intel Fanboy's are running around, AMD/IBM/Elmer Fudd fanboy's will figure out every possible nook and cranny that Intel may have been guilty of. Each nook and cranny will be repeated so often that it will finally sink in as facts, long before any FTC conclusions are made.

If a verdict comes against Intel, the fanboy's will run around like a chicken with it's head cut off while the AMD fanboy's will say "I told you so!" long into the night.

If a verdict comes in favor of Intel, since it was obviously a fact that they did lots of wrong, the AMD fanboy's will run around like a chicken with it's head cut off while Intel fanboy's will say "I told you so!" long into the night.

People who buy what's best at the time like me will have to endure this BS for God only know's how long.

That seems like what AMD loyalist are doing!

Let's say every green blooded guy around here gets their wish.

Intel pays fines totaling 2 Billion and another 750 Million to AMD. (just made up totals) Intel then passes these costs on to the consumers. This equals higher prices. 55 million (what AMD asked for) does nothing to get AMD out of debt. Intel prices go up and then AMD can raise theirs to try and get out the Red. No need to make better products or etc.... Higher prise by default So what we have here are folks cheering for Higher Prices and for their favorite company to raise prices on products that should arguably should have even lower prices.

[Donnie27]

i know thats exactly what im saying, If someone would of bought the processors there were options they could of taken to produce them. of course no one would even take them for free so no need to outsource fabrication of them. I know i look like an amd fan boy because im using a phenom, but I'll be the first to admit the thing is slow.

Yes and several times since the Dot Com bust, Intel and AMD have hit hard times!

[perkam]

I'm not going to be impressed until someone fines Intel at least $1 Billion.

Anything below that is chump change for Intel

Perkam

[Donnie27]

i know thats exactly what im saying, If someone would of bought the processors there were options they could of taken to produce them. of course no one would even take them for free so no need to outsource fabrication of them. I know i look like an amd fan boy because im using a phenom, but I'll be the first to admit the thing is slow.

No, you make your points without flames, hell, that in and of itself is refreshing I don't think all Phenom owners are AMD Fanboys, just as All C2D users aren't Intel Fanboys.

No way in hell I think AMD is going anywhere, I DON'T want them to go anywhere and I want to them get back to being the old AMD we all were used to, love or hate them. This Hector versions is Lame! Try to Win in Court what you can't win in the Fabs just seems a little evil to me. Opteron gained market share, why didn't Intel block that? Desktop went from 13 to 36 once AMD's bug problems were all dealt with. No way In hell does the buggy nForce and its buddy VIA boards worked well enough for folks to flock to AMD, no matter what the real AMD Fanboys say. The best boards (many Revision 3, didn't start until after A64 shipped. I'll say right here and now that my Asus A8N 16x rivals any Intel Chipset Board I've ever owned speed and or stability wise. Too bad I can't say that about many others.

[tajoh111]

P3 inferior, man talking about revisionist history. I had 4 AMD systems in row and one Intel systems in those days. AMD's 750 and VIA's 133 and 133 will POS big time. Please don't remind me of the my Crappy SD-11, ABit 133 and GA7X revisions 1 & 2 after RMAs, or my first Epox KX-133 or how frakking hot my First TBird 1.3GHz that just up and dies, RMA turned down because I was accused of Overclocking when this sumbiatch didn't even want to run at stock.

Only someone who's NEVER used a Core 2 and the first Athlon 700MHz Classic and AMD 750 would make such an OUTRAGEOUS claim. AMD might have had much better performance Processor, that's why I bought one (company purchase for $500). That SD-11 isn't as good as any 965 right out the gate=P Total crap and not in the same class. Even Compaq lost business with their models that wouldn't share IQRs Then my Gigabyte nor FIC's AGP never ran stable in anything but 1X mode. Jerky DVD playback, corruption for VIA 686B and tons other crap make what some of you guys saying total unrelated to what in the happened!

When AMD shipped something worth damned they gained market share, that crap wasn't worth gaining market, just a Rollins said, AMD had weak platforms. Then when Dell did move to the they prove what Intel said again, the strain Dell put of AMD inventory was evident. If their platforms were so frakkin good they wouldn't have felt forced to by ATI to make Dell happy. Too many of you folks are contradicting yourselves. If the Platforms were that good, they didn't need to by ATI.

I used all and have all the above systems. Maybe I had better luck because I bought asus MB which only made freaky stable motherboards at the time. BTW (my desktop and laptop(the thing that I am typing this one right now) are both core 2 duo).

By the time Dell got on the AMD train, it was too late. AMD was already on a tailspin from its Intel dual core processor fallout. AMD did not offer a competitive product at the time and beside the new intels, AMD look lacklustered.

If dell was selling AMD in the first place during their glory years, people would have gotten alot more trust into buying AMD products. But now, since it was released when the core 2 duo was released, people just didn't want to buy the amd product because the INTEL name was not only strong, it also had a superior product to back it up. Buying an AMD at this time only strengthened the argument, AMD products are not worth a damn compared to what intel had to offer. If this was boughten during the AMD glory years, when intel did not offer a superior product, then it would give AMD the needed boost to its reputation to gain public trust.

These two attributes led to AMD just not selling well.

The P3 Katmai 450 is still my most regretted purchase. I think I paid 800 dollars for the thing(not even top of the line). I was seduced by those commercials that had kids coming out of some door, them playing this nah, nah, nah song. Talking about a revolutionary multi media experience when all they did is increase the bus speed a bit and add some instructions. Intel is good at dressing up garbage products, as revoltionary with advertising. Something only market share leaders could do.

As I said AMD did gain marketshare, but they never have reached INtels dominants status, given the inferiority of intels product for a time. If intels product were so superior, why did intel need to bribe Dell to keep them exclusive?

[cegras]

That seems like what AMD loyalist are doing!

Let's say every green blooded guy around here gets their wish.

Intel pays fines totaling 2 Billion and another 750 Million to AMD. (just made up totals) Intel then passes these costs on to the consumers. This equals higher prices. 55 million (what AMD asked for) does nothing to get AMD out of debt. Intel prices go up and then AMD can raise theirs to try and get out the Red. No need to make better products or etc.... Higher prise by default So what we have here are folks cheering for Higher Prices and for their favorite company to raise prices on products that should arguably should have even lower prices.

Oh yay, extrapolation from a single data point.

ALWAYS PRODUCES RELIABLE RESULTS.

[ripken204]

Did you read what I wrote?


Yes there is alot of similaritys, but were talking about $1.00 drinks. If cokes not your choice, do you not go for sprite instead? Hows the market share split among soft drinks? Hell EVERY major store has their own off brand flavor. There are absurd amounts of alternatives, so if you want pepsi goto taco bell.



A PC for most people is a major purchase done every couple years. Now if you were running an AMD system and were pleased, you would be more inclined to purchase another right? So for the distributor it would be useless to shut out 25%+ or whatever the market share is at any given time when there are exactly 2 pieces of the pie. How many PC brands were there? Dell, HP, Gateway? If you dont sell both, and another company does guess who gets the business?


Who cares about fast food really? There is one on every corner and your throwing away $6 on a meal vs $500-2000 on a computer. Again compare the amount of fast food places and soft drink brands to computer manufactures and brand.

If Coke wants to goto mcdonalds and sign an exclusivity contract with them its OK because there are so many players in the game. But if mcdonalds went to every fast food and corner store and tried the same thing guess what would happen? ANTI-Trust lawsuit. Intel went to all the major players and did the same thing. Understand now?

Dell knows there are people on both sides of the fence, so cators to them BOTH

just because drinks are only a dollar or two does not mean that it is insignificant. its all about quantity. if mcdonalds only uses coke products, the n you have to take into account how many people order that. you always see "xxxx people served". take that xxxx and multiply it by the price of a drink. that is millions and millions of dollars in drinks each day. coke would love all of that extra product being sold. if mcdonalds ever switched cola companies, then the former company would be out a large chunk of money.

[Jimmer411]

just because drinks are only a dollar or two does not mean that it is insignificant. its all about quantity. if mcdonalds only uses coke products, the n you have to take into account how many people order that. you always see "xxxx people served". take that xxxx and multiply it by the price of a drink. that is millions and millions of dollars in drinks each day. coke would love all of that extra product being sold. if mcdonalds ever switched cola companies, then the former company would be out a large chunk of money.

True but the market is much broader.



There are MANY brands of cola out there, and MANY places selling them. Its a big difference from CPUs or OS. Remember the MS with the IE vs Netscape? or Windows media player vs real player?


Its one thing to block sales of 1 of 6 or 20 competitors, its a whole different story to block out sales of your only competitor. Thats when you become a monopoly.

James Rockafeller's Standard Oil company of the 1800s era is a great example of 1 company that was a monopoly.

[ripken204]

1800's is alot different than now, thanks to all of the laws, lol.
for cola im not sure how many companies there really are...
there is Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and then some random no name cheap stuff.
Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are both huge companies and afaik are the only 2 major players, correct me if i am wrong.
then there is Intel and AMD, two major players, and then those other random small companies.

[STEvil]

You see I don't think it is different, The two big players, coke and pepsi will own all the other brands i.e sprite, 7up etc.

Do you not agree that there will be an agreement between mcdonalds and coke to keep pepsi out?

Go to A&W (or wherever) and get pepsi products then.

Huge difference between soft drink makers selling only at certain chains (which they likely own or are partners with) vs. cpu makers paying off OEM's to not sell each others product.

[Sr7]

Sorry , but that's BS.Intel did not pay/ask partners not to buy AMD , that's completely illegal and Intel is smart and aware of that. Instead they offered a rebate system which made buying AMD uneconomical.You can read about this in AMD's original complaint for the trial.

Basically , the resellers had to options : make more profit or sell AMD CPUs.The choice was theirs.

Do your research. Three letters for you. MDF.

[xlink]

Seriously, P3 to P4 years for intel should have been the dark ages because they had an inferior product(worse performance for the most part and higher energy consumption), which also had a high price. Yet they continued to sell well.

the p3 actually used less power than the athlon at a given clock speed, at least for what was released retail. It just didn't scale as well.

whole thing about this when the xbox came out. M$ was originally going to use an athlon derivative, but in the end the lower power consumption of PIII edged out AMD's offering.

[gallag]

Go to A&W (or wherever) and get pepsi products then.

Huge difference between soft drink makers selling only at certain chains (which they likely own or are partners with) vs. cpu makers paying off OEM's to not sell each others product.

It is the same though, just because dell was Intel only you could still go to many other places and buy AMD, Is this not the same point you are making?

And dont make facts up, coke does not own mcdonalds, They will just be rewarding them financially for not using pepsi. Is this not true?

[AbelJemka]

That seems like what AMD loyalist are doing!

Let's say every green blooded guy around here gets their wish.

Intel pays fines totaling 2 Billion and another 750 Million to AMD. (just made up totals) Intel then passes these costs on to the consumers. This equals higher prices. 55 million (what AMD asked for) does nothing to get AMD out of debt. Intel prices go up and then AMD can raise theirs to try and get out the Red. No need to make better products or etc.... Higher prise by default So what we have here are folks cheering for Higher Prices and for their favorite company to raise prices on products that should arguably should have even lower prices.

Your point is, if I understand correctly, don't fine Intel because they will raise price and because that will be not enough to save AMD

And if a doctor had killed 50 guys but saved 50 others you will say don't put this guy in prison because he could still save lives but we can't bring back dead

[RedBull78]

so what are you guys wanting intel to do here?
sell for higher prices?
stop R&D?
sell less chips which leads to higher prices?

i dont think that any of the above choices are acceptable.
if AMD cant step up their game then it's their fault.
i find it very stupid how in this world you can get in trouble for leading innovation.

Lemme guess, you voted for bush? Twice? Right?

[Faktor]

Predictions:

Intel fanboy's will vehemently claw and scrape for any argument and news and history for why they are innocent.

At the same time the Intel Fanboy's are running around, AMD/IBM/Elmer Fudd fanboy's will figure out every possible nook and cranny that Intel may have been guilty of. Each nook and cranny will be repeated so often that it will finally sink in as facts, long before any FTC conclusions are made.

If a verdict comes against Intel, the fanboy's will run around like a chicken with it's head cut off while the AMD fanboy's will say "I told you so!" long into the night.

If a verdict comes in favor of Intel, since it was obviously a fact that they did lots of wrong, the AMD fanboy's will run around like a chicken with it's head cut off while Intel fanboy's will say "I told you so!" long into the night.

People who buy what's best at the time like me will have to endure this BS for God only know's how long.

I like the way this man thinks!

[Faktor]

Lemme guess, you voted for bush? Twice? Right?

Ad hominem and straw men attacks are frowned upon.

[kromosto]

this investigation means nothing. it is late and totally nonsense anymore. maybe this lateness is for a purpose.

after nehalem will intel need that offering anymore no. sorry but amd has no reply for nehalem and i think they are praying for intel to not open overclocking on mainstream, cheap cpus of nehalem. overclocking on cheap nehalems may effect intels high priced cpu sales but kills amd totally. so when we are so close to this situation and they start investigation it means nothing. they should have done before when amd was strong.

[Shintai]

they could of outsourced fabrication.... like they are doing now? chartered semiconductor, TSMC, or any other third party semiconductor manufacturer that had a 90nm process at the time?

They can only outsource a tiny amount due to licensing issues. And they outsourced what they could basicly.

[Shintai]

Go to A&W (or wherever) and get pepsi products then.

Huge difference between soft drink makers selling only at certain chains (which they likely own or are partners with) vs. cpu makers paying off OEM's to not sell each others product.

Here Carlsberg uses their power to remove others from bars etc. Carlsberg pays some gear etc. However the issue is if they still go on and use others. Carlsberg simply removes their beer from the bar. And people want Carlsberg.

Translated into Dell, imagine Intel didnt want to sell any chips to Dell. Dell would lose alot of customers and companies like HP would giant leap.

And aint most payments amde to be spend on commercials...

Also when AMD gives OEMs a special low pricecuts unfair to others. What is that? Its just another way of paying the OEM.

2 companies, same boat.

[eleeter]

Also when AMD gives OEMs a special low pricecuts unfair to others. What is that? Its just another way of paying the OEM.

2 companies, same boat.

No offense, but you have absolutely no understanding of a free market system.

[KeZzZu]

Well my opinion is, when big bad EU get's some sneak peak and their slow Catepillars starts running around, there's lot of can's of Whoop ass moving around, not to mention how high fines they will put. This is just silly, all this trolling etc... if AMD have had more marketshare it could spend more on R&D or build more fabs etc... but again who knows? nothing isnt 100%... we can just say "if"

All i just see atm there will be massive delivering times just around corner.

[STEvil]

Here Carlsberg uses their power to remove others from bars etc. Carlsberg pays some gear etc. However the issue is if they still go on and use others. Carlsberg simply removes their beer from the bar. And people want Carlsberg.

Translated into Dell, imagine Intel didnt want to sell any chips to Dell. Dell would lose alot of customers and companies like HP would giant leap.

And aint most payments amde to be spend on commercials...

Also when AMD gives OEMs a special low pricecuts unfair to others. What is that? Its just another way of paying the OEM.

2 companies, same boat.

Go to a different bar.

Or better yet go to a liquor store.

Same goes for your response gallag: if you dont like your choices at McDonalds or A&W or Burger King or White Castle or etc go to 7-11 or a gas station or any other convenience store.

Huge selection out there because what you guys are talking about are not monopolies. Yes the tactics are somewhat similar but the market is completely different.

[Shintai]

Go to a different bar.

Or better yet go to a liquor store.

Same goes for your response gallag: if you dont like your choices at McDonalds or A&W or Burger King or White Castle or etc go to 7-11 or a gas station or any other convenience store.

Huge selection out there because what you guys are talking about are not monopolies. Yes the tactics are somewhat similar but the market is completely different.

Then buy from HP instead of Dell....exactly the same.