A great victory for AMD! Intel forced to pay for bribing.

It's been 5 years since intel tried dragging it's feet in order to avoid a record fine for bribing and threatening PC makers as well as retailers to not use AMD Gaming CPU's.

intel finally lost it's appeal in court and will be forced to pay $1.4 billion for bribing PC makers and retailers.

http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/12/intel-loses-eu-antitrust-appeal/?ncid=rss_truncated

I am glad this cheating and frankly disgusting company will at least face some consequence however meager for trying to force AMD out of the market which means there will be a competitive market place for consumers and hence better prices. Good news is AMD wasn't forced out of the market and their R9 series gaming GPU's was extremely successful. AMD's Gaming APU's which absolutely trashes intel CPU/GPU's when it comes to gaming is also doing quite well and got excellent reviews. AMD's is also receiving new talent include a legendary Gaming CPU engineer as well as a new Gaming Scientist Richard Huddy. Interview (here).

What a cheating and disgusting company, this why my next Gaming CPU will be an AMD CPU because of moral reasons.

intel will make one last ditch effort to appeal in the highest court which I am pretty sure they will fail which is fine with me the more money intel waste's on lawyers the merrier. But it's about time intel faced the music. Too bad the money fined, AMD will receive none of it as they were on the receiving end and lost billions of dollars as a result of it.

its almost like intel killed your first child or something... lol.

how ridiculous to get so worked up over something so inconsequential. intel still makes the only CPUs worth owning.

I'd love amd to make a new powerhouse CPU worth owning. But until they do I will stick with intel even after their shady tactics.

Same thread in system wars so it gets the same reply:

All those years when Dell only used Intel comes to mind. With that said when aiming for the high end AMD CPU's are trash compared to Intel's high end. Their GPU's are good, albeit power hungry. AMD will get my money again when their CPU performs better then Intel's Core i7 with comparable power consumption.

Maybe sooner if I want to build a cheap APU based system for the wife.

@Xtasy26:

Perhaps it is your opinion that people should consider the business practices of corporations vis-a-vis their business partners.

But really, you ought to be bringing up this opinion in forums where there are a lot of people who do give a care to the survival of Intel's competitors.

Yet, here in GameSpot, you should be expecting that there are a lot more people who consider what the consumer gets instead, e.g. the efficacy of the products which they can buy, be it Intel, AMD or some other designer.

So unless you can somehow prove that this practice of Intel hurts the consumer, and prove it beyond more speculation and extrapolation, you are not going to convert people over to AMD here with mere "moral reasons".

How does it not hurt consumer's when intel bribes PC makers to not use AMD or sell it to retailers? It as simple as when a consumer walks into a retail store and only sees intel processors on the shelf and no AMD they don't have a choice. Instead of choosing intel they could have chose AMD. If you don't understand this simple concept then there is seriously something wrong with you.

@cyloninside How in the world is it inconsequential when consumers where hurt as they didn't have the ability to choose an AMD processor. AMD thus lost money which they could have used for R&D. So you are saying "bribing" in consequential?

Then I would say here that the consumer is better off walking out and going to a retail store which did not take Intel's money.

Intel can't take away the dignity of independent retail stores and the wisdom of the consumer. If it did, the fault lies as much with the retailer and consumer as much as it is with Intel.

Perhaps you think that Intel should uphold the social responsibility which it has, but if you do, you are the one with something wrong instead: naïveté.

This is the reason why that kind of news are good new. I really hope AMD put all these $1,4b to R&D, to catch up a little with Intel.

I bought a 4770K not by accident but cause AMD has nothing equal to offer (especially in the performance per core segment which AMD is light years away...).

New technologies and better performance is what we will see if these two companies fight again with similar performance. Don't forget that Sandybridge (20% more performance with 30% less power) was the product of Nehalem vs Phenom that forced Intel to work more...

If AMD manage to reach at least at 80-85% of performance per core (that means sandybridge levels) then we wil have price wars that will benefit our wallets.

AMD is doin fine with their GPU department. It would be extremely difficult to see their old glory when a $300 FX CPU beats a $1000 extreme Intel CPU. But it would be great and possible (with that $1,4b) to see the phenom vs kentsfield era again :).

This is great news. I wonder how much of that will go to AMD because they could use it.

Maybe this will help them do a bit more R & D and bring a true successor to the FX - 55.

.....I used to be such an AMD fanboy.

.. This entire comment makes me facepalm.. Do you understand that Intel's practices were undermining the only real competition in the market? To the point that AMD was getting into financial trouble and couldn't directly compete with them.. If AMD were to go bankrupt you would be left with one option in the industry in which they could charge what ever the hell they wanted.. They already started doing this sh!t with AMD falling behind in charging extra for chips just to be able to overclock it.. If your a pc gamer and you have a brain you should very much care about healthy competition.. It breeds competitive price wars.. And in the end, who wins? WE THE CONSUMER.. Its mind boggling that I even have to explain this simplistic reason why you should be for this, regardless of what ever stupid fanboyism you have.

I've always bought amd cpus, normally cheaper and I don't need super performance of the best Intel i7, my 8350 has not struggled with anything that has been thrown at it yet.

Before my fx I had a amd 64 x2 3800+, which served me well and is still running on my mother's pc now.

Shame that it only seems to come from Europa.

If AMD folds, that's its own problem - specifically its would-be/maybe inability to compete in both advantage-gaining business practices and creating products which consumers want.

Also, I don't believe that Intel could edge out AMD. After all, there are people like you and the Xtasy26 who make purchases of "conscience". AMD can also always sue Intel with antitrust suits, like it has done in the past.

Plenty of "fair competition" to be had if AMD knows where to look for it, and it does, considering that it won quite a number of suits against Intel and Intel paid out to AMD more than a few times in settlements, like in 2009.

Alright, if you are going to say that, what if some time in the future, AMD turns out to be doing the same damn thing that Intel did then? Then what would you say?

For now, it can be argued that AMD seems to be the "good guy", of course - even ranking quite well in some NGO's rating of corporations' conscience about their supply chains. Yet, there's no guarantee because AMD is ultimately a profit-seeking corporation after all, is there?

I would tell you this too; I buy whichever product is the most convenient and cost-effective to me at the time. If I look at brands, I use the brand names for doing research on these aspects of their products. I am not one for brand loyalty, be it due to outright favoritism or conscience-driven drivel.

People have to realize AMD CPUs are quite competitive in non-gaming use which account for the lion's share of PC sales and uses. They're certainty adequate enough for most gaming use too.

Will AMD get all that money or will it go to someone else?

Intel deserves it. Still don't like the fact that Intel is gonna go to court again. Probably trying to stall the payment for as long as possible.

All of this while using more power at a higher clock speed and more "cores". We call that inefficient and its not something to be proud of.

Also: This is GAMEspot's PC forum. With that said the above still applies.

Same here. I think everyone is just scared of market monopoly and for good reason too. Intel can charge whatever the hell they want for their products if there is no other competitor around.

The lawsuit Intel was in didn't concern gaming PCs. It concerned general-purpose PCs.

As a PC gamer, I doubt the higher clock speeds and individual core inefficiencies would be a concern considering the vast majority here do not stick with default speeds or cooling methods.

If we stuck strictly with whether a game ran well enough or not, then the AMD CPUs like my FX-8350 are more adequate enough especially in its $180 (newegg) price range, The problem here is, too many are concerned with reading benchmarks rather than playing the games.

Two things: 1. AMD is not getting the money. 2.This is a five-year-old case and the damage has already been done.

For the damage Intel did to AMD with these actions, 1.4 billion is a slap on the wrist. In the Pentium 4/Athlon 64 era, Intel couldn't keep up with AMD. This deal cost AMD billions, and those billions went into Intel R&D, leading into the situation we have now.

@jun_aka_pekto:

I made no mention of the lawsuit in my post.

Your right we don't stick to stock. But most here and pretty much everyone else at non AMD forums would much rather start off with a cool running Intel CPU that can get hot when over clocking then start off with a hot running AMD chip. I base this on market share reports and Steam.

Some want more than adequate and are willing to pay for it I paid 250 at Microcenter for my i7. Some want higher minimum frame rates. Some want faster single and dual thread performance when their games that only use 2 threads or when using their PC for "general-purpose." I wanted to make use of Quick Sync and over clock my CPU

..And yes some people care about power consumption and efficiency.

The i7 4770k gives me all the performance that your FX-8350 has all while running cooler and using less power. How is this a bad thing?

With all of this said:

AMD will get my money again when their CPU performs better then Intel's Core i7 with comparable power consumption.

I know that Dell, the biggest PC manufacturer at the time, didn't start using AMD processors until Intel released their Core CPU lineup, which could finally match the processing speed of AMD processors. It did seem pretty suspicious at the time. There seemed to be a smear campaign online at the time as well, as most people thought Intel CPU's were better. In reality, Netburst was worse than 8th gen AMD CPU's...

Do ppl like AMD just because its perceived as the underdog? Their hardware may be cheaper but their cpu/gpus are prone to overheating and their drivers suck.

For a gaming pc I am very wary of using amd, too many games have significant driver issues.

Well the Intel Core2 (Conroe/Kentsfield) architecture is when Intel start being far better than AMD as performance per core @same GHz so it's not really suspicious. Now if they were selling Netburst crap over AMD CPUs back at 2005-2006 then its suspicious.

Well AMD is nice when you want a cheap gaming PC. A $400 AMD CPU based (with Nvidia GTX750 GPU) can give you enough CPU n GPU power to play games like XBONE, while being cheaper and a PC at the same time :).

But of course if you can spend around $600 and more for a gaming PC, Intel is no brainer for the CPU...

Prone to overheating? AMD CPUs run cooler than Intel ones and their gpus run at similar temps to Nvidia.

No. I chose the FX-8350 because it gamed quite well on its own plus I considered it the better CPU for the times when I record game footage. It also approaches i7 3770k numbers on many non-gaming tasks.

My PC is a microATX minitower. It has the FX-8350 running at stock speeds (with 3rd-party HSF) and an MSI 4Gb GTX 770 (Twin Frozr layout). The case doesn't even have a front fan at the moment. But, it runs all my games just fine. Sure, the GPU gets warm with games like Watch Dogs and Far Cry 3 because the heat pipes are close to the side panel vent. But, that's about it.

On the CPU side, I certainly have no issues.

I have been using AMD CPUs off and on for 15 years, and I have never had issues with overheating on the CPUs. And yes, I do overclock. I have never had issues with Radeon drivers either.

80% of the people who walk into a retail store looking to buy a new PC isnt going to care what's inside of it. All they care about is the cost and is functionality. Intel and AMD will run all the programs the mass market cares about. Intel would have to get into a price war and marketing campaign to persuade people not choose AMD.

This is sooo ninety's. There were almost no benchmarks (realworld and not) and people that knew about PC hardware were like 1 in a thousand.

Today, most people that don't know at all about PC's, choose tablets for "PC Usage" (Internet, facebook, browser games, videos, music etcetc)...

Today people can look at the internet for what they can buy. They can make a market search and look at benchmarks.

If they are bored or don't care most of them have a friend or a relative that have knowledge of PC hardware. Asking a friend or a cousin what PC to buy is very common.

@Coseniath said:

@superclocked said:

I know that Dell, the biggest PC manufacturer at the time, didn't start using AMD processors until Intel released their Core CPU lineup, which could finally match the processing speed of AMD processors. It did seem pretty suspicious at the time. There seemed to be a smear campaign online at the time as well, as most people thought Intel CPU's were better. In reality, Netburst was worse than 8th gen AMD CPU's...

Well the Intel Core2 (Conroe/Kentsfield) architecture is when Intel start being far better than AMD as performance per core @same GHz so it's not really suspicious. Now if they were selling Netburst crap over AMD CPUs back at 2005-2006 then its suspicious.

I think you mean 2003 - 2006. But, that's exactly what happened. They didn't offer the Athlon 64 or X2 until the very end of their lifespan...

@superclocked said:

@Coseniath said:

@superclocked said:

I know that Dell, the biggest PC manufacturer at the time, didn't start using AMD processors until Intel released their Core CPU lineup, which could finally match the processing speed of AMD processors. It did seem pretty suspicious at the time. There seemed to be a smear campaign online at the time as well, as most people thought Intel CPU's were better. In reality, Netburst was worse than 8th gen AMD CPU's...

Well the Intel Core2 (Conroe/Kentsfield) architecture is when Intel start being far better than AMD as performance per core @same GHz so it's not really suspicious. Now if they were selling Netburst crap over AMD CPUs back at 2005-2006 then its suspicious.

I think you mean 2003 - 2006. But, that's exactly what happened. They didn't offer the Athlon 64 or X2 until the very end of their lifespan...

Yeah I was refering mostly before 2006. But Intel is guilty for bribing at 2008, when they clearly had the advantage. Thats really strange... Why would someone bribe someone else to promote their product, when their product was already superior than the competition??? I doubt that we have seen the whole puzzle of what happen... and we might never seen it. Most (if not all) billion dollar companies keep their secrets closed, since it cost them less to pay loss at a court, than a loss in their trust/secrets/etcetc...

Perhaps you should understand that you can't bribe retailers and PC makers as well follow that up with threat's because it's ILLEGAL. I am not arguing from a social responsibility point of view, I am arguing from the point of view of legality. They violated European Law. intel screwed AMD out of billions of dollars in their bribing scheme..which AMD could have used that extra revenue to pump into R&D and adding more to their engineering staff.

Intel would violate many others to gain an edge; it's a given. With that said, Intel is shooting its own foot; considering Intel's high profile, there are plenty of people watching it for wrong-doing. Besides, there's Intel litigation history - it lost a lot of suits and made many settlements. Any gains it made from sleazy business would be carved away by its legal losses, and any long-term benefit that Intel has would be mitigated by its bad reputation.

I am not worried that Intel would "win", because the checks and balances are already there. The most that I would hope from Intel is reliable and effective products - not Intel suddenly turning honest and such other unlikely occurrences.

Maybe I should tell you that I don't support your opening post because you are using this latest legal debacle by Intel to trumpet AMD.

How would you know what AMD would do if it had more revenue? Were you a fly on the wall during AMD's financial meetings?

How would you know how much AMD was hurt? If there is any information that you have, it's second-hand, and it originated with AMD - who prepared that information for the court cases to hurt Intel for being stupid enough to get caught.

If you don't have any hard evidence, those are a lot of naïve suppositions - suppositions that you made to trump up AMD here.

Perhaps you buy into the image that AMD is a "victim" here, but expect others to be more skeptical.

... Where the hell are we pointing out about who is the good guy? My point went WAY over your head.. No where did I state AMD are in fact saints, I am pointing out the idiocy of your claim and why AMD staying in the game is a good thing.. And I would say the exact same thing if roles were reversed, this hardware fanboyism is sickening on all ends.. It doesn't take a rocket scientist if your a consumer to put 2 and 2 together and realize having Intel and AMD competing against each other in the market is a GOOD THING.. It brings down prices, pushes the quality of both products to compete.. If it were just intel, they could be lax and over charge.. They started doing this sh!t years back when AMD couldn't compete in creating the K chips.. Gone are the days with intel for instance of buying a lower end Core 2 duo for instance and overclocking.. The I3 chips are all the same with a locked core so they could charge more by upping the clock rate themselves, in the I5 and I7 they force you to pay more for the ability just to overclock it.. I shouldn't have to explain to you why this sucks compared to days past where most chips you could overclock out of the box........ And no if AMD folds it's all of our problems because it means intel has a monopoly and they can charge what ever the fvck they want.. Where are you going to go to if you don't agree with their prices? It's mind boggling why I even have to explain the basics of why competition in a market place is good for the consumers.

Yet what was it do you think that my "claim" was? Do point this out.

Tell that to Xtasy26, not me. Xtasy26 is the one twisting the court case into a trumpeting for AMD.

What makes you think that I, or anyone else here, don't know this?

I would tell you this though - and this is something that I have already told you earlier - I am not worried over AMD folding. It has been competing with Intel for years, and the two of them had their valleys and peaks during those times.

Maybe you want to freak out over Intel resorting to such sleazy practices, but I have yet to see Intel get away scot-free when it gets caught.

What's mind-boggling - at least to me - is that you would flip out over my remark of ambivalence for AMD's fortunes. Also, you sound like a fear-monger to me - I personally don't see Intel being able to edge out AMD with such dirty practices when it gets caught so many times and lose court case after court case.

Does gamespot have the highest number of dumbass posters or what? Intel was trying to force AMD out of the market, which would have been VERY BAD, becuase then you'd all be paying out the ass for all your precious intel chips. Please get brains people. If AMD goes, so does PC gaming as a whole.

I remember paying $520 for a P2-266 back in 1997 and that's on the lower half of the CPU line. Once AMD is gone, I can imagine seeing a return back to those times.

Oh so now it went from "Who cares about the survival of AMD" to "But amd will hang in there and still compete ike they always do, the market will survive, this is fearmongering!".. You got called out on your idiocy, you can't back step and retroactively claim that's what you meant from the beginning.. It shows your a clueless consumer that hopefully will wise the hell up with out having one of the competitors going under and you suddenly having to pay 100% mark up on the said product.. Your as bad as the console fan boy idiots that wants to see their rival companies to crash and burn in the industry.. It is mind boggling from a consumer perspective why you don't see this as huge news, especially as a pc gamer.. Competition is a good thing, and with the way AMD has been struggling these past few years it was starting to look grim.. Especially with the whole bulldozer chip line failing miserably..

Ah, so that what's you thought that I said - and indeed that is what I meant: I do not care for AMD's fortunes. Also, I will still say that that you are a fear-monger. You will see no retractions from me.

You can call me out for my "idiocy" when and if AMD does fold - that has not happened yet, has it?

As for the rest of your remarks, you are just recycling statements which you have said before - how tiresome.

P.S. For you fear-mongers, I suggest that you do research on AMD's health before you go around raising fears of monopolies by Intel and such other paranoid shit. AMD still has some opportunities to pull itself up to survive; its main competitor doesn't have to be pulled down for that to happen.

"you don't support post" that shows that intel cheat's to win. Translation: I don't like to see people post the truth and remain ignorant in bliss.

Why would they not invest in R&D or use it to pay down their debt? You think they would just blow it on hookers and cocaine? LMAO.

If intel bribed PC makers and told them not to use AMD or bribed retailers not to put AMD CPU's on the shelf, they did hurt AMD because AMD wasn't able to SELL THEIR products. Hence they were able to bring in REVENUE thus they made less MONEY.

This simple commonsense. Any idiot with a half a brain would know this. Why in the world would the EU bring charges against AMD if it didn't hurt the "competition"?

As for "checks and balances" well that didn't work out to well here in America that's because intel has a powerful lobby, they didn't get slapped with a fine like they did in Europe.

Exactly! They are already charging $1000+ for a i7 4960X. Would be surprised if they start charging $1500.00 if AMD wasn't there.

Apparently people like @Gelugon_baat doesn't seem to grasp this simple concept.

Prices wouldn't change much if AMD disappeared...Intel still has to give people a reason to upgrade, plenty of people sitting on OCed Sandy Bridges, like myself @4.4GHz

I came in this thread to bitch about how wrong the OP was and that performance is all that matters blah blah blah...then I did a lot of reading. I've realized that Intel's business practices for a long time (think back to 80's) have been shady. A lot of this is still a major grey area for me, just because a certain court defined it as illegal doesn't mean much, I already disagree with plenty of laws. IMO,

Bribing PC manufacturers=bad,

wanting to keep tech/patents to self= really not bad in my eyes.

Then again where would AMD be if they never built off of x86 in the first place...

That being said, I hope AMD can recover and become competitive again...though with Intel having superior fab tech and architectural strengths it will be an uphill battle.

Great read for some basic history Intel legal history

Back in 2009 over in Europe and Japan Intel was fined for trying to create a monopoly bribing and other schemes. The EU fined Intel 1.45 billion(finally),Korea fined Intel for 25 million, and Japan did the same, ordered Intel to stop certain sales practices. then later in 2009 Intel had to pay AMD 1.25 billion for a anti trust case from back in 2005 about cross -licensing patents . I remember a story in Germany a town beside one of AMD's plants, didnt have a single AMD based computer even though AMD had a plant near by because of what intel did with bribing.

Most of the shady intel schemes started in 2004-2006, when intel was losing to AMD's Athlon 64 and X2 cpu's performance and AMD was gaining some good ground for business. So intel started bribing big computer companies like Dell HP etc if you buy from us you will get a major discounts. Since all intel had was the Pentium 4's and D's.

And since intel had the majority of the market and the resources AMD couldnt out bid in getting those companies orders. Now starting in 2005 ish intel starting owning all patents relating to cpu tech which caused AMD to be stuck with current tech and or things they created from scratch. Because of this and intel's massive wallet were able to dump bucket loads of money into research to get back into the lead while causing AMD to trickle away. AMD's FX series was AMD's first fresh cpu architecture that was not related to their Athlon 64's aka "K8" since the patents were up.... their Phenom lines was a continuation of the old Athlon 64's.

While these fines show intel's "evil side" the problem is that AMD wont get this money from this fine. And intel's profits from this year's quarter can pay for it multiple times over its a drop in a bucket for them.

Could you explain to me why this is anything but AMD's fault in this specific aspect? Is there an agreement where they share patents or some law requiring such?

How is it AMD's fault? Intel is a monster in size compared to AMD. Intel's pockets are deep and their reach is almost unlimited. Its like a chiwawa vs a timber wolf who would win? Intel and AMD did have a cross license agreements with patents and fabs with generalized universal type of tech that both sides could use. However intel time after time violated the agreements and AMD time after time went to the courts and didnt start getting anywhere until 2005 where intel was made to pay them 1.25 billion in 2009. This lead to all the investigations and fines to intel for their shady practices. But AMD wont get any of the 1.45 billion.

Intel's Core CPU line was developed completely in secret, breaking trust agreements with AMD. Intel tried to bury AMD and gain a monopoly by using very shady, illegal tactics. If AMD had not aquired ATI, it very well may have worked, and we would likely be paying twice as much for Intel CPU's...

@04dcarraher@superclocked That makes more sense now, my knowledge on the cross-license stuff is very fuzzy. What I don't get, is in that time period while core was being developed what was stopping AMD from producing some comparable tech on their own...not a strong company if they need to share Intel's patent to be competitive (again I'm not the most educated on their history). Also if they were hurting for research money why the f*** did they spend 5.4 billion on ATI? 5.4 billion could more than pay for genius CPU architects with plenty left over for investment.

I get it, Intel does some nasty shit that really isn't excusable, but I can't help but think of how AMD has had a helping hand in their lack of success at those times.

I'm for open knowledge, even though it may not help me (in fact could hurt me) I always try to share new discoveries and new progress in my research with others...that's how the world advances imo.

It's fvcking hilarious and sad people need to even explain this basic notion on here to begin with..