Comments on: Report: Nvidia chimes in, says Intel pricing unfair

Following the European Union decision to fine Intel $1.45 billion, Nvidia is crying foul too.

[lennie22]

instead of complaining why don't nvidia makes their chips cheap too? doesn't that mean the consumer wins? or they don't want the consumer to win?

[Qtechbg]

Ever heard of dumping? Intel can afford it and sure would do it if they need to. This does not benefit the customer in the long run...

[gerrrg]

@Qtechbg

It's not dumping; Intel is local. Anti-dumping laws are meant to maintain free and fair trade between nations.

And, this tactic resembles a loss leader that every retailer in the world does.

[lennie22]

@Qtchgb: so by nvidia lowering their prices and putting ships out there in the market the consumer doesn't win by getting more performance for the money spent? where does your logic comes from? nvidias chips run pretty hot. right now my 16" laptop is running pretty sweet on a GMA4500MHD, I had no hickups in vista or Win7. I don't run hardcore games on my latop because I have a pretty powerful desktop computer for that also my Xbox360 has been getting a lot of play and netflix viewing.
people who are looking for more powerful graphics engines can go with something more expensive like the nvidia chips, but for the average consumer who aren't looking for that Intel is indeed hitting the sweet spot. if nvidia wants to really get into the mainstream they need to drop their prices so regular consumers don't have to buy really expensive latops, in which case the consumer wins.

[lennie22]

awh man, I think I need to go sleep now, I meant to say "chips" not "ships"

[drfrost]

lennie22:

You're missing the point. Intel is selling at below cost in order to put Nvidia out of business. When that happens, there won't be an Nvidia to drop it's prices. Then Intel will raise it's prices to whatever the market will bare and the consumer will lose out.

[Tod Smith]

Nvidia, do a Sony make a Laptop chip that's high-end and initially sell them at cost with the intent to make money on the same architecture.

[gertruded]

We are talking about criminal corporations here, why is anyone surprised that they cheat? They have been convicted of illegal practices. The rest of the world is waking up and starting to protect themselves from American corporations.

[sythara]

Go back to China

[drfrost]

Unfortunately he's right. At least partially. Microsoft has certainly been guilty of it. Face it, selling a 3-chip set at almost half the price of the cpu itself? A fifth grader can smell something rotten there.

[thelemurking]

...Huang said Intel sells an Atom chip by itself for $45, but sells a three-chip set for $25 to lure business away, according to Reuters. "That seems pretty unfair," he said to Reuters.

...An Intel spokesman said that computer makers are free to purchase the Atom chip alone or bundled with other chips. "If you want to purchase the chip set, obviously there is better pricing," he told Reuters.

WOW Intel, I knew you guys were pretty sleezy, but that's just flat out cheap, dirty and disgusting. Offering huge discounts if all 3 are bought, at a price which is almost half off the cost of the processor alone. I understand discount in bulk, but that is down right unfair.

No one else stands a chance when Intel does something like this. How can Nvidia step in and try to sell a graphics chip to someone when they would have to pay $45 for the processor alone and then have to purchase the chipset and graphics chip?

I will now do my best to avoid anything Intel! I've stuck with AMD for a long time, but was very close to going with an Intel i7 940 for my next gaming box. Not now though!

[freemarket--2008]

You just realized now that Intel was crooked? Where have you been the last 20 years?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_v._Intel

[bensobel]

How is that sleezy? Don't you get better pricing if you buy both home and auto insurance together?

[hafenbrack]

Yes, but that is because you're getting a discount on the fact that it's easier to manage an account when things are bundled, you're not getting a discount on the actual servic provided. What Intel is doing is leveraging their market share to "encourage" suppliers not to purchase outside the Intel world. Illegal, debatable, but a little sleezy, I would think so.

[odubtaig]

Bensobel: unable to tell the difference between 'costs less than buying these items separately' and 'costs less than buying just one of these items'.

The only thing I can think is that the Atom can't be worth $45 in the first place.

[drfrost]

bensobel:

Yes, you can get a break if you buy your home and auto insurance together. It's still more expensive than just getting one or the other. In Intel's case, you get all three for LESS than the price of ONE! Intel is selling at below cost. This can make sense in some circumstances, like a gaming console, where the manufacturer plans on making up the cost with future software sales. This is not the case for Intel. The only real benefit for them here is they'll run Nvidia out of business and then they'll be able to significantly raise their prices.

[flatrock19]

I think that Nvidia made a mistake in developing a chip for the Atom but not for the VIA Nano. If a Nano/Ion combo could produce a significant performance advantage, as well as being 64-bit, it might be able to take a significant chunk out of Intel's netbook market share. They might even have a better chance with set top boxes since Intel's graphics chips are going to have a hard time playing video at 1080p.

[man_w_balls]

Solution for NVIDIA's problem:
Buy the 3-chip set for $25 and throw away the other 2 (or resell them, etc). Keep the Atom and produce ION motherboards for Netbooks and blow away Intel chipset Netbooks.
I would love to have an ION based netbook! If you don't know about this setup, look it up - it's a real GPU combined with a chipset, and it's graphics processing power blows away everything Intel produces.

[man_w_balls]

I am guessing Intel's "3-chip set" for $25 is the 945G chipset, ICH7 i/o controller, and Atom CPU. NVIDIA could buy those cheaper sets and sell the unnecessary 945 + ICH7 to ASUS, Gigabyte, Acer, or any other motherboard-producing company that still makes 945-based motherboards at cost. Then they would recoup their lost few bucks per set, and still be able to sell their ION systems.

[Michichael]

Unfortunately there's also a licensing deal involved in which they're disallowed from reselling, I would think...

[jpriddy]

This is a ridiculous argument. Sure, they ship with the Intel Extreme Graphics GPU, but no one that is interested in graphics horsepower is going to stick with it. Everyone that wants awesome graphics goes to NVIDIA cards or Radeon or something else that is high end. The fact that the Intel GPU is so cheap is indicative of its failure to provide high end graphics capability. If NVIDIA wants to sully their good name by making a cheap GPU for use in these PC's they will also have to deal with the fallout from being associated with a piece of garbage product (like Intel).

[dbargen]

Um, criminal? Try again. This is business, not some socialist commune. The company that innovates in both its technologies and its business models within the law ought to be ahead, and intel is makes those leaps in spades. Just because AMD, the largely subsidized european manufacturing darling, can't compete EVEN WITH GOV'T CASH shows that their production methods couldn't compete in a free market. Now that the EC has gotten away with looting Microsoft, they're going after another great American company: Intel.

Is it just me, or do they seem jealous? How about desperate? We would think that here in America, firms would be safe from such nonsense, but it likes like Obama is now pursuing "anti-trust laws" that could go beyond the real definition of a monopoly to allow the state to control these private entities. You'd think he'd learn after all of the failed attempts across the pond for command-and-control economies. I guess they prefer the power over a failing state than letting the country prosper.

[fourthletter]

"Just because AMD, the largely subsidized european manufacturing darling"

You do realise AMD are American don't you ? They were formed by ex-Intel employees. Both Microsoft and Intel used their dominant position to keep their place at the top of the tree even with crap products, AMD Athlon 64s were considerably faster and cheaper than Intels Pentium 4 & Ds yet Intel still had the market sewn up because they paid customers to only stock their chips. Vista was a disaster for Microsft yet it is still installed by default on 90% of computers for the last three years.
This has nothing to do with USA vs EU and everything to do with a FAIR market, I want fast cheap chips not slow expensive ones and that is what would happen if Intel are allowed to crush any worthy competition through bribes and downright intimidation.
GROW UP the EU doesn't need to chase American firms for money, they don't have a Trillion $ + debt hanging around their neck LOL

[fdunn3]

Somebody (FTC, EU, etc) needs to look at the cost of marketing these chips by themselves against the "bundle" and if Intel is selling at a loss then the FTC and EU can stepin.

If I were representing Nvidia I sure would file a complaint.

Intel is just pain crooked.