It’s common, in tech enthusiast circles, to conceptualize conflict between companies as a battle or war. This isn’t solely a conceit of journalists — read the comments on any GPU review or game performance debate, and it quickly becomes clear that plenty of enthusiasts themselves view Teams Red and Green locked in an existential conflict. Intel would be Team Blue in this example, though it doesn’t really enter the fray.

There is, however, such a thing as taking a friendly (or unfriendly) debate too far. Last year, two Russian men got into an argument over who made the superior GPU, AMD or Nvidia. The fight ended when Aleksander Trofimov murdered his former friend, Evgeny Lylin in a disagreement over who made the better GPU. I say “former friend” because it’s never made any sense to me to describe this sort of thing as friendly. However close you might have thought you were to someone, you were clearly less close than you thought if they’re willing to shish kebab you over a graphics card.

Trofimov hit Lylin in the head twice, stabbed him to death, and then kept stabbing him 11 more times before burning his body in an attempt to hide the evidence. Trofimov, for the record, was the Nvidia fan. Tweaktown reports the issue at hand was whether AMD or Nvidia graphics cards were better, while PC Gamer has said it was a specific debate over GPU coolers. The two men worked in software development and were out having a drink when the argument began.

AMD’s GPU coolers have improved noticeably in recent years, but Nvidia is still generally considered to have the upper hand. Historically, AMD has been more willing to push thermal envelopes, even when it made their GPUs somewhat louder and required more powerful fans. Nvidia, for example, has typically set tighter limits on maximum GPU temperature and noise (80C has been Nvidia’s typical target for GPU temps, versus 95C for AMD).

Whether you view this as good or bad depends on what you’re looking for. One could argue that Nvidia has left some performance on the table by targeting lower temperatures and thermals. One could also argue AMD pushes its GPUs to higher temperatures because it needs to run its cards hotter to compete with Nvidia in the first place. Both of these viewpoints have some validity to them, and neither is a good reason to stab someone for disagreeing with you.

Aleksander Trofimov received a 9.5 year prison sentence for his crime. Let’s all try real hard not to follow his example. It’s not supposed to be an actual war.