MSI Has Quietly Stepped Back From Producing AMD Graphics Cards and Says Its GPU Focus Is Now on GeForce RTX Models

Peter_Brosdahl

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AMD could be losing an important board partner after MSI has quietly stepped back its production of Team Red's graphics cards. It's true that AMD doesn't offer as many variants per generation as NVIDIA does but it is unusual for a company as large as MSI to not produce all that it can but apparently this is not happening with GPUs on both sides of the fence.

See full article...
 
I'm betting this is more a.. "We want to make your AI cards and sell those" And Nvidia saying. "Sell AMD's." And they said "What if we stop selling AMD's?"
 
I'm betting this is more a.. "We want to make your AI cards and sell those" And Nvidia saying. "Sell AMD's." And they said "What if we stop selling AMD's?"
Try not to assume malice when incompetence will do...

AMD could also be allocating for their 'AI' cards from what would otherwise be their consumer wafer budget, which would be good for AMD but not so much for consumers - something they regularly do (see newest Zen dies going to Epyc SKUs first etc., opposite of what Intel does with Xeons). Of course this is also what Nvidia does, but Nvidia ships an order of magnitude more volume (or more?).
 
Try not to assume malice when incompetence will do...

AMD could also be allocating for their 'AI' cards from what would otherwise be their consumer wafer budget, which would be good for AMD but not so much for consumers - something they regularly do (see newest Zen dies going to Epyc SKUs first etc., opposite of what Intel does with Xeons). Of course this is also what Nvidia does, but Nvidia ships an order of magnitude more volume (or more?).
That's still malice except from AMD in that example.
 
It makes sense as they aren't a leading manufacturer (at least popularity wise) in AMD cards it seems. Now Nvidia cards they rank right towards the top IMO.
 
Last I heard from them on this topic, my understanding was that AMD cards were barely a double digit share of their GPU sales and that's why there weren't three models of everything like there was on the NVIDIA side of the fence...
 
That becomes a vicious circle. Don't make product because of poor sales; can't get sales without product.
 
That becomes a vicious circle. Don't make product because of poor sales; can't get sales without product.
Gotta have an exciting product to make back manufacturer demand for their parts. Notice how little interest Intel has garnered, so far.
 
147 SKUs for 20xx, 30xx, and 40xx models. That's almost 50 per generation. How are they making money with that many products per stack?
 
As much as I wanna think this is some smokey backroom deal with nVidia, I don't think it is. I think AMD has long put GPU production on the backburner over CPU/APUs, and this is just the result when you can't get your AIBs parts to make your cards.

That said, I can't really fault AMD for taking it's limited fab allocations and weighting them to prefer the higher margin parts - but it does make me sad to see them basically cede everything over to nVidia on that front. I think AMD only kept up their R&D so they could get some of that sweet crypto/AI market.

Not that the consumer market for GPUs is huge anyway, at least compared to the insatiable appetites of Crypto and AI.
 
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