[Warning: Inquirer] Nvidia And AMD Accused Of Price-Fixing

[Dureth]

Unless you think the (example) X1900XT is miraculously a lot cheaper right now?

Strange how the x1900xt 512MB I bought 4 weeks ago was only £115. I'm pretty sure they were a little more than that at launch. Heck look at the x1950pro, thats come down in price over time. The 7600gt is cheaper now than it was at launch. The 7900 series cards are cheaper now than at launch.

 

[zytok]

That's different. You're not dealing with two more or less equal products.

OK, lemme use some real world example. Recently RAM has been found to be price fixed a couple of times. Its not as simple as saying 'well, get slower/less RAM', the RAM was price-fixed. Are you saying that you don't prefer the lower RAM prices right now?

If NV/AMD are found guilty of price fixing, then that benefits everyone apart from NV/AMD. If they aren't guilty of it, then no one loses.

I remember when the fastest of fastest GPUs, at the very cutting edge, would be no more than £200-250.

Hey don't get me wrong, I'm all for cheaper components but usually if you want the very latest, fastest tech, you expect to pay for it. I might have got the wrong end of the stick but if people are only complaining about the top-end stuff and not the price of graphics cards in general, then they're just gonna put it down to the cost of R&D into the product.

 

[zytok]

IT would be interesting to see if this is a written admission.

If it is, they're going to have to defend themselves very vigourously...

I think if you re-read it, you'll see that they are only "admitting" receiving complaints, not "admitting" price-fixing. Some clever use of English by the article to sensationalise (the Enquirer - never....)

 

[peetee]

Who here thinks their trainers cost 10% of their price or more to make??

I'm perfectly use to being ripped off. Not much we can do tbh. We need better competitiveness in the industry. Two companies just aren't enough to provide such competition.

theres more than 2 manufacturers of trainers =)

 

[AWPC]

From experience I would say that they do price fix.

Consider Dec2005-Jan2006 the 7800GTX512s were almost £600 (some were even over £600). I paid £587 for mine then few weeks later they dropped the price by almost £150 as supplyoutstripped demand and suddenly you could get one so obviously they could not sell for such a high price anymore as the 7900 was getting ready to launch. Then 2 months later they were around the £400 mark. This was most definately inflated to get more money out of the consumer as they knew demand outstripped supply. Should not be allowed remember when Nintendo got caught fixing £60 per N64 game.

To me I think that £400 ish is pretty fair for a top end gfx card regardless of R&D costs as that is with respect ATI/Nvidias problem and not the consumer you cannot overcharge just because the demand is there. Since the 7800gtx512s Nvidia seem to keep their top end product way below £500 as I suspect they knew it was daylight robbery to charge almost £600 (I know some of it is retail mark up but Nvidia like to set a price so it does not devalue their flagship products).

 

[silversurfer]

They can charge what they like and it doesnt usually relate to their actual costs at the time. Im sure they'd admit to lots of profit in their annual tax return but the illegal part would be a non competetive agreement with a seperate company.

I think the gfx market is fairly competetive and people are confusing pricing a product in the market according to the budget of the intended customer as being illegal.

 

[HangTime]

I remember when the fastest of fastest GPUs, at the very cutting edge, would be no more than £200-250.

So what? Let me ask you a question: Would you prefer one of those former cutting edge GPUs costing £200-250, or a 8800GTS costing the same? I know which I'd rather have. Heck, that was quite a while back in any case (Geforce DDR or earlier iirc?) meaning that in real terms that £200-250 is more like £240-300.

I'm not going to get into a debate about whether price fixing takes place or not, but I do dispute your claim that cards don't drop in price and simply vanish with other cards taking their place. In the long term, sure, but there's loads of examples of cards which have dropped in price.

Or, even if what you say is true, it wouldn't matter because the lower priced products are getting replaced by faster ones too (faster than top end cards of previous generations). To elaborate: Say you wanted a 7900GTX, but it suddenly got replaced by the 8800GTX. No problem, simply buy a 8800GTS which is faster and cheaper than the 7900GTX!

As someone pointed out earlier, these high end gfx cards are luxury goods. Sure, I'd like to have one but I've never spent more than £211 on a graphics card. It's not like someone is holding a gun to your head and saying you must buy one, there's plenty of alternatives.

It's not like people should have some divine right to be able to afford the latest and greatest graphics cards.

Going back to the original topic, one of the most damning indicators that 'price fixing' has been going on for a while is where you get deliberately crippled cards which can be softmodded with an extremely high success rate (9500, 9800SE AIW, x800GTO2 etc).

 

[FoxEye]

I agree with voting with your wallet. I have no intention of paying more than £100~ for any new graphics card.

Last card I bought was a 7800GT, for £250. Looking back on it, that was a real waste of money. And it's louder than Heathrow airport too

It's just a shame that the current DX10 mid-range cards (8600GT/S) suck so badly Forget price fixing, why did both companies decide to cripple their cards with 128 or 64 memory interface?

That's feature fixing