Back on September 27th, MSI talked candidly with PConline at the MSI Gaming New Appreciation Conference, in Shanghai. Multiple MSI executives were available to answer questions regarding products, launches, and potential issues.
The first question asked was about the brewing US-Chinese trade war and if it will affect prices of graphics cards and CPUs. To which, Liao Wei, Deputy General Manager of MSI Global Multimedia Business Unit, and MSI Headquarters Graphics Card Products gave an actual answer. Stating that the since NVIDIA’s GPU core is handled by a TSMC in Taiwan and memory is handled by Samsung and Hynix in South Korea and the United States respectively, there is little chance of further graphics card price hikes. However CPU side prices may increase on the Intel side, however, AMD is expected to be unaffected.
They were next asked why NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX graphics cards are already out of stock and hard to come by, To which Liao Wei again replied, stating that the RTX 2080 shipments are actually holding quite well, however, the RTX 2080 Ti shipments have been relatively small which is due to production yields. While this is to be expected considering the large size of the GPU die it also means NVIDIA appears to be focusing more on RTX 2080 production.
Liao Wei also touched on the fact that the RTX series is far more complex than the previous generation, with the RTX 2080 Ti using some 2600 components compared to the GTX 1080 Ti at 1600. For further comparison, it is said the RTX 2080 uses 2400 components and the RTX 2070 some 2200. So not only are the newer GPUs more complex and made of more components, but they also face a production crunch. Originally it was possible to produce 3500 GPUs a day for the GTX 1080 Ti, while the RTX 2080 Ti can only be produced at a rate of 1800 per day. It is likely this is before screening for defecting chips.
With prices so high everyone is already waiting impatiently on the RTX 2070 launch, to see just what it offers and PConline were not afraid to ask when it would become available. MSI have stated they will officially launch their RTX 2070 graphics cards on October 17th, with production already well underway.
They also touched base on when the MSI Lightning series would make its return with Yang Shengzhi, Senior Associate of MSI Global Multimedia Products Department, stating it would be available very soon and that they will have additional features that consumers have been gravitating towards such as, a better appearance and RGB lighting. That said, they reaffirm that the cards true purpose will be for overclocking, however, they want to make it more consumer friendly. Source: PConline
