No flame war, just some opinions & observations FWWI. Dunno where Duncan is coming
from on this.
AMD nearly ruined an already ailing ATI when they acquired them and made numerous
wrong decisions during the the process, this I believe has been documented. Currently
ATI drivers that had been improving for years are in the crapper again.
Now I have issues with AMD & Nvidia for various reasons. Yet chose an ATI over
Nvidia. Chose an Intel CPU C2Q over AMD X2 & Phenom, Intel X48 chipset over Nvidia
both for performance & compatibility reasons. I'd repeat both choices (with i7/X58)
today until I see the market change *radically*. Scanning the archives will show I
was set to go the other way in all cases until I did the research.
LOL, even Intel doesn't take their video offerings seriously and they were a key
player in the "Compatible with Vista" whining to lower the functionality bar along
with Dell. Businesses make deals for exclusivity or elevated status all the time
while pushing the limits anti-competitive law until it pushes back. As famous man
once said "it all depends on what is IS". There's not absolute control over this kind
of practice real-time and it's a convoluted definition of what is IS.
So in the end a legal decision will not refine the law any, only stands to tweak
nature by assigning "blame" & "damages", lets big government flex it's muscle, and
ultimately doesn't make Intel the devil vs. AMD the saint. The resulting financial
loss (which intel logically are trying to minimize) will be nothing more than the
cost of doing business to them. Even if they hadn't played "dirty pool" post-Prescott
they'd still be on top now. Fact is AMD is has worked out to be the low-end-to-mid
solution, Intel the mid-to-high for more reasons than cash incentives. Next year who
knows?
As to the EU, et al they are so socialist leaning that they ARE hypersensitive so
likely to come to same conclusion, fact. Good or bad I am not judging, just
observing. Too little/too much control, both are bad and the properly ratio is fluid
& subjective.
Stan Zaske wrote:
Dude, I don't want to get into a flame war with you but 3 countries have
independently concluded that Intel bribed manufacturers to freeze out
AMD in their distribution networks with so-called rebates and to delay
the release of AMD based products. AMD didn't make crappy PC's with
their products. They made some missteps along the way (Phenom I) as
Intel did (Netburst) but AMD didn't attempt to bribe manufacturers to
give preference to their products. Intel did and next March we're going
to see Intel get spanked again in US court this time. The Ati division
of AMD makes excellent GPU's and I predict that nVidia is going to have
a rude awakening in the 4th quarter when DX11 high performance cards
come out. Larrabee is going to get spanked by both camps when Intel
realizes that using x86 to make a video card is another netburst dead
end. ;-)
maccrawj wrote:
EU thinks anti-competitive the minute a company is successful &
dominates based on customer choice.
I say "look at all the crappy PC's that could have been made with AMD
chips these past 5 years (and some have been)! It's not been good for
AMD these past ~5 years and it has a more to do with AMD than Intel,
just look at them fraking up ATI.
Stan Zaske wrote:
Yeah, Intel has been in the news a lot lately and their poor
decisions are costing them dearly. Japan, Korea and now the EU have
concluded that they are anti-competitive. Next year I believe AMD
will get their shot in court and I predict that Intel will again be
held accountable. Imagine all the money that AMD lost over the past 5
years because of Intel's bribes to PC makers. Beginning to look like
the GM of the semiconductor world minus the threat of bankruptcy of
course.
