When Colluding With A Competitor, Perhaps Don't Send A Direct Email Suggesting You Keep Prices High
from the might-come-back-to-bite-you dept
It's rather rare these days to see collusion lawsuits where there's overt evidence of collusion. Instead, it's usually implicit collusion where a case needs to be made that this is a problem. However, every once in a while you still get those good old fashioned situations where there's evidence of direct price fixing. For example, the Inquirer points us to a case involving questions of collusion in the graphics card market between ATI and NVIDIA, where it appears NVIDIA's VP of marketing sent an email to ATI's president and chief operating officer suggesting that, while the two companies were competitors, they should work more closely to make sure their stock prices each remained high. Apparently, the lawyers in the case tried to hide that document as a "trade secret." If you consider it to be a "trade secret" that the two companies may have been collaborating, then perhaps they have a point. But the judge didn't buy it: "This court is not a wholly-owned subsidiary of your companies. I am against you hiding information from the public."![Hide This Hide this](https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/topclose.png)
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Filed Under: collusion, email, video cards
Companies: ati, nvidia
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Law and Order
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They are beginning to annoy me
I also suspect they artificially dry up the supply of old chips/cards when the new one is released, killing the chance to bottom feed on last years model. Wake up guys, I now have my first ATI based system, and I'm liking it.
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FYI
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Re: They are beginning to annoy me
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Re: They are beginning to annoy me
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Re: FYI
For example, *every* ATI card I've ever known has performed poorly for its price and I constantly have driver issues.
NVIDIA cards on the other hand, I've always felt like I've gotten my money's worth (only card I bought when it was first released was the 7800GTX) and never had any driver issues.
And I'm running Vista Ultimate x64! How the hell do I NOT have driver issues with anything but the Asus Xonar D2X?
That said, if its mobile I want ATI. For some reason (in my experience, again) their mobile graphics solutions always are rock solid.
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Re: Re: They are beginning to annoy me
Just a thought. :)
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Re: They are beginning to annoy me
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Re: They are beginning to annoy me
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Re: Re: FYI
Its not a personal experience at all. What generation of card you and I used, and driver support for that generation and what games came out and what processor you used with the graphics card all come into play whether one card or the other was a better experience. There are sites that do performance testing and they will show you which card does better in what scenarios, etc. Personal opinion is when I say something like "I think ATI cards are better in the long run", not "we had a better experience" because most people don't even know what constitutes a better experience when it comes to graphics cards and how they impact your system.
How the cards truly tend to differ is like this: Nvidia's cards do better under low performance strain, ATI's perform about the same across all performance strain; thus allowing ATI to do better at high resolution and Nvidia to do better at low resolution. That is, of course, until recently with the 4800 series where ATI crushes both ends.
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Re: Re: Re: They are beginning to annoy me
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depressed
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Since when?
I thought the government, congress and the courts WERE wholly owned subsidiaries of Big Business™ (used with permission).
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Smoking Gun e-mails
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Re: Since when?
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Re: Re: They are beginning to annoy me
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Re: Smoking Gun e-mails
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Re: Re: Re: FYI
Its not a personal experience at all. What generation of card you and I used, and driver support for that generation and what games came out and what processor you used with the graphics card all come into play whether one card or the other was a better experience. There are sites that do performance testing and they will show you which card does better in what scenarios, etc. Personal opinion is when I say something like "I think ATI cards are better in the long run", not "we had a better experience" because most people don't even know what constitutes a better experience when it comes to graphics cards and how they impact your system."
I've used and installed close to a hundred different cards in my PCs and in my line of business. For some site to do performance testing claiming one card is better than another is not accurate. No-one will have the same situation as you do personally. When you take in all the different hardware configurations (more than several billion with different MOBOs, RAM, CPUs, bus types, etc.) and all the different software configurations (more than several trillions with different OSs, retail, OEM, shareware, spyware, etc.) you really just need to try different boards and manufacturers to find the BEST for you.
Sure the testers have optimum test machines to get their results but who plays games with just a fresh OS and drivers? My PC has a ton of stuff on it!
So Matt, yes it IS a personal experience!
Both of these companies should be punished severely if they have colluded!
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Evidence is a secret
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Re:
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