In light of the class action lawsuit that accused hardware makers Nvidia and ATI of fixing prices to keep video card prices artificially high, Nvidia proposed a $1.7M settlement.

The settlement, which is pending court approval and would resolve all claims against Nvidia, would see that $1.7 million sum split amongst those that bought hardware directly from ATI or Nvidia websites between December 4, 2002 and November 7, 2007.

Of the $1.7 million, Nvidia has offered to pay $850,000 of the figure. It is assumed that ATI would pay the remaining sum, thought the company has yet to confirm this. After that payment, Nvidia will not need to provide any other compensation, such as legal fees.

Nvidia also announced that it has settled a related price fixing case filed by individuals who bought Nvidia hardware from non-direct vendors. Under the agreement, those individuals will receive a total of $112,500 in exchange for dropping all charges.

However, that $112,500 will only go out to those who filed suit on their own, as the court denied a request classify the indirect purchase case as a class-action lawsuit, which would have encompassed anyone who purchased hardware from a non-direct vendor during the allotted time frame.

Hardware manufacturer ATI has launched the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, which it boasts as "the fastest and most powerful graphics card available today." That statement, ATI explained, is based on the card's "extreme top score of 6920" in the 3DMark Vantage v.101 benchmarking tool.

The dual-GPU card packs two HD 4800 graphic chips, said to provide "2.4 teraFLOPS of GPU power," and 2GB of GDDR5 memory. To illustrate the card's performance, ATI provided the above benchmarks, comparing the HD 4870 X2 to rival Nvidia's GTX 280.

At present, the HD 4870 X2 is only available from online system builders such as Alienware and Falcon Northwest, carrying a suggested price of $549, with the card expected to hit retailers shortly.

A pared-down version that sports 1GB of GDDR3 memory, dubbed the Radeon HD 4850 X2, is slated to hit in September for around $399, according to TechReport.

Complete details on 4870 X2 and the benchmark machine follow... Read more

That anti-trust suit against Nvidia and ATI from back in 2006 is still ongoing, with some interesting developments occuring recently. The two graphics chip manufacturers were hoping to keep certain evidence from being presented to a jury, but Judge William Alsup was not impressed. Especially since this was emailed by Nvidia's Dan Vivoli to ATI's Dave Orton in 2002:

"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. $5 and $8 stocks are a result of no respect."

The ongoing class action suit alleges that ATI (now AMD) and Nvidia kept prices artificially high by releasing products at the same time and at similar prices. NVidia recently slashed prices after ATI released a highly competitive video card at a much lower price point.

The AMD website is now carrying new Catalyst drivers for Radeon videocards. Release note mentions Vista fixes for 3DMark2006, City of Heroes, DOOM 3, and Neverwinter Nights among other games. There should also be a performance increase for Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Thanks Blues News.

AMD/ATI is busting out with yet another Vista driver release of their own. Pushing Catalyst up to 7.2 and boasting some pretty serious performance boosts for the OpenGL side of things.

Over at the AMD website you can find version 7.1 of the Catalyst drivers for ATI Radeon powered videocards. The release notes mention fixes for Desperados 2, Rome: Total War, Sniper Elite and Splinter Cell Double Agent.

The AMD website has been updated, offering version 6.12 of the Catalyst drivers for Radeon powered videocards. Nothing much by ways of game fixes this time around, only Black & White 2 and Neverwinter Nights 1 are mentioned.

So people have been fussy about the price of videocards at the high end being pretty darn insane these days. Apparently the prices have offended some folks so much that they decided to take NVidia and ATI (now AMD) to court over it.

Summons were issued by one Trong Nguyen on behalf of himself and others against Nvidia, ATI, and AMD. Lots of other plaintiffs have joined in, following news that ATI and Nvidia received summons from the Department of Justice ... The allegation is that Nvidia, ATI and AMD conspired to manipulate graphics card pricing [snip]

It goes on to saying that the two companies pretty much got together over donuts and tequila to decide on the prices to break gamers hearts. Laughing over the pain inflicted on poor people everywhere absolutely forced with no alternative to buy those $600 videocards.

Over at the AMD/ATI website you can now version 6.11 of the Catalyst drivers for Radeon videocards. The release notes mention fixes for 3DMark03, Tomb Raider Legend, Rush For Berlin and Rome: Total War. Thanks anthonybean.

The AMD website has been updated with the latest Catalyst drivers for AMD/ATI Radeon videocards. The new release adds support for recently released ATI GPUs, improves performance, and fixes issues related to 3DMark 06, Anarchy Online, The Godfather, Commandos Strike Force and World of Warcraft.

The ATI website has been updated with the 6.9 release of the Catalyst videocard drivers. According to the release notes, this release fixes issues with Oblivion, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, DOOM 3, The Settlers: Heritage of Kings and a few other titles.

The ATI website is now carrying the 6.8 release of the Catalyst videocard drivers for all you Radeon owners. The release notes mention fixes for Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth, and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.

ATI's support page has been updated, listing Catalyst 6.7 drivers for Radeon videocards. The release notes mention fixes for Oblivion and Quake 4 when it comes to games.

FiringSquad has a lenghty AMD-ATI Acquisition interview posted, talking to ATI, AMD, NVidia and several game developers about the upcoming merger of ATI and AMD.

The ATI website is now carrying v6.6 Catalyst drivers for Radeon videocard owners. The release notes mention performance improvements for F.E.A.R. and Far Cry, while also fixing issues related to City of Heroes, Quake 4 and Age of Empires 3.

New at FiringSquad today is this Q&A with Jeff Yates, asking the Havok vice president of project management about their work with ATI on GPU powered physics acceleration.

HardOCP reports from Computex, where ATI is showing off its GPU based physics acceleration solution. ATI has teamed up with Havok for this.

Over at ATI's website you can now find version 6.5 of the Catalyst drivers for Radeon powered videocards. The release notes mention fixes for 3DMark 05, DOOM 3, Far Cry and various HDTV issues.

The ATI website now has version 6.4 of the Catalyst drivers for Radeon videocards posted. This release fixes issues related to DOOM3, Oblivion, Maya 7, Quake 4 and Dawn of War among other products.

Hexus.net has posted a Q&A with ATI's 'Chuck', the programmer responsible for the recently released beta Catalyst driver that enables the use of HDR and AA at the same time in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.