ATI and NVIDIA accused of price fixing

It’s an accusation that’s been doing the rounds for a while, with similar antitrust allegations being made in 2006. However, Tom’s Hardware has got its hands on some of the emails that form a part of the exhibits in the case, and they appear to add some weight to it. You can see them in full here, and they reveal an apparent dialogue between key figures at both ATI and Nvidia.

Among the topics discussed is ‘The GPU Initiative,’ which appears to be a team-effort between the two companies to define the specific characteristics of GPU (ATI previously called its graphics chips VPUs). However, in one email, ATI’s Paul Ayscough also hints at the possible ‘son of “get in the game/the way it was meant to be played.”

The emails also reveal a dialogue between ATI’s then CEO Dave Orton and Nvidia’s Dan Vivoli, where Vivoli says ‘I really think we should work harder together on the marketing front. As you and I have talked about, even though we are competitors, we have the common goal of making our category a well positioned, respected playing field.’ Vivoli also admits that ‘we both have increased the price of our high end product several fold over the last 4 years while Intel’s high end prices have more than halved.’