EU fines Intel $1.45 billion for sales tactics

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Did you read the articles?

Fair is fair...

Intel using their cash because they are a huge corporation to pay off manufacturers to delay using the competition processors in their products is not fair practice and only proves that Intel knows that AMD products are better and a serious competition in the market even though they are a smaller company.
 
As for the subject matter, I've been subject to Intel's iron fist...so this being possible isn't news.

On another note....how is it that Intel's products are inferior?

Having worked in integrated circuit design for the largest computer manufacturer in the world, we (me being a member of we, the ASIC design team) were not of that opinion.
 
I didn't say inferior (harsh word) I said that AMD products are better and that this was proven because Intel had to resort to this nonsense.

AMD has been long proven to be a better processor for the money. Ask your local gamer which processor "works" better...

I have Intel processors and AMD processors in my house and could care less what powers my computers so long as they meet my demands, but there are BITOG style websites out there for gamers and AMD is the choice.
 
Well, let's invert the question. If INTEL is so much better, albeit at higher cost, why would they feel the need to leverage the competition outside of any free market choice by consumers?

Request: Please leave out any Tempestdystopian "might is right" pathetic platitudes in the answer.
 
I've used both. Both have their strengths, but for the last few years AMD has been a day late and a dollar short with their offerings. Take a look at any decent computer hardware forum - and I'm not talking about kids trying to upgrade their mom's dell or build a "gaming rig" for WoW - and you'll see that Intel is the choice of those who know. Now, if you want to build a cheap general-purpose computer for somebody then AMD is the top choice hands down. While the ceiling of performance is lower, the performance-per-dollar is better with AMD, but I think even this will soon change in either VIA's or Intel's favor.
Again, I build and use both, but IMO AMD hasn't had a truly great, groundbreaking design since the Athlon XP processors for socket A.
 
The problem I see with Intel is that they are "too big" in terms of manufacturing efficiency and supply volume. No one else can build a CPU profitably in 2 FAB, let a lone the several FAB all over the world that Intel has the scale for. Their product is doing well right now on its own, but when the time was tough for Intel, like during the early Pentium 4 era, Intel uses strong arm tactics to prevent AMD from gaining market shares in the large companies like DELL and HP. Intel is also famous for supporting RDRAM, and inferior memory for desktop market as sales had proven, and try to strong arm everyone into using it (Intel get a cut for every sales), but the market revolt by going to VIA's chipset.

It is cases like these that give Intel a bad name. Intel is now not as hostile as before, because it knows that everyone else is right behind trying to take it on: AMD on CPU, nVidia on chipset and graphics (if you consider Intel's junk graphics), Broadcom/Atheros on wireless, ARM on netbook/mobile chips, IBM on game consoles and embedded systems.

I think if it is not because of competition, Intel would still be charging $500 per CPU and force you to buy the latest by obsoleting what you can upgrade to. Look at Pentium 4 and Core2Duo processors, the same sort of interface have so many incompatible upgrade in between, for the same memory types (DDR2). AMD on the other hand, can support all the way up to the current generation with just a bios upgrade.
 
Originally Posted By: greenaccord02
Again, I build and use both, but IMO AMD hasn't had a truly great, groundbreaking design since the Athlon XP processors for socket A.


You know that the ground breaking design for Pentium 4 was scraped and Intel went back to a derived version of Pentium Pro/2/III/M design for the Core architecture, right?
 
Aren't you shaving onions at this point? Until some major revolution comes around, I don't see the state of the art having much distinction over yesterday's has-been. Not paying much more attention in the past decade other than observational data, Uncle Bill assures that anything I buy is going to be operating like wet cement eventually. These are horsepower wars, imo. It seems the same cumbersome processes are just done faster and are provided more resources to consume.


INTEL owes so much to Mr. Bill.
 
Originally Posted By: PandaBear
Originally Posted By: greenaccord02
Again, I build and use both, but IMO AMD hasn't had a truly great, groundbreaking design since the Athlon XP processors for socket A.


You know that the ground breaking design for Pentium 4 was scraped and Intel went back to a derived version of Pentium Pro/2/III/M design for the Core architecture, right?


Yes, I was aware of that. The pipeline was just too long in P4. PIII was a fine archetecture, as is I7.
 
I like this excerpt:

Jonathan Zuck, President of the industry advocacy group the Association for Competitive Technology notes, "For the past 20 years, the microprocessor industry has delivered more innovation, more speed, more functionality, and lower prices. Over the past ten years, the average price of Intel's PC microprocessors has dropped by 60 per cent. When the only one complaining about the competitive situation is AMD, it raises serious concerns about the efficacy of this action."
 
I'm sure INTEL liked it as well.

My response to that would be, "So?" How does this alter the fact that INTEL manipulated the supply chain to favor its product over its competitors at a higher cost to the consumer/customer?
 
Hmm, I don't recall saying "so much better".

I don't know what Intel is accused of doing or if they actually did it.

The protectionist aspect has just as much merit AFAIK as AMD manufactures IC's in Dresden and perhaps elsewhere in the EU.

And any meaningful discussion about microprocessor performance wouldn't require any inference to whatever it is you're referring to but would require a knowledge beyond yours. So let's skip that part.
 
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Originally Posted By: digitalSniperX1
Hmm, I don't recall saying "so much better".

I don't know what Intel is accused of doing or if they actually did it.

The protectionist aspect has just as much merit AFAIK as AMD manufactures IC's in Dresden and perhaps elsewhere in the EU.

And any meaningful discussion about microprocessor performance wouldn't require any inference to whatever it is you're referring to but would require a knowledge beyond yours. So let's skip that part.


1st: You can read the links ..to comment intelligently ..but it's optional





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I know they fined them. The rest is someone's interpretation of what happened. In other words, reading the links doesn't mean jack.

And doing so wouldn't contribute to a discussion about the merits for each product.
 
I read the articles...lol, complete waste of time.

Well, with one exception, LOL.

"It said AMD offered 1 million free chips to one manufacturer — which could not accept because that would lose it a rebate on many millions of other chips. It only took 160,000 free chips in the end, regulators said."

No fine for AMD selling below cost, LOL.
 
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