AMD: DOJ ends probe on GPU price fixing

Late last week, the US Department of Justice officially told chipmaker AMD it has ended its antitrust investigation into the company's pricing and marketing practices and will not take any action, AMD announced on Monday. The subpoenas were issued at the end of 2006 for AMD and ATI Technologies, which was purchased by AMD earlier that year, as well as competitor NVIDIA. As the top two add-in graphics chipmakers were producing products similar in performance and pricing, industry analysts believed the two were involved in collusion and price fixing practices.

AMD got into the graphics card business in October of 2006 by purchasing Canadian ATI Technologies for $5.4 billion. At the time, ATI and NVIDIA each held about 25 percent of the graphics card market for electronic devices and have since been the top two firms offering add-in video, with Intel and other firms usually supplying only integrated graphics.