With just three AMD Radeon RX 7000 GPUs on its website, many thought MSI might’ve broken up with Team Red. It turns out that’s not necessarily the case, however. A partnership for RX 8000 series isn’t off the cards, but the Taiwanese company’s graphics priorities currently lie elsewhere.
Issuing a statement to clarify its position, MSI tells Hardwareluxx (translated from German) that its “focus at the moment is more on RTX cards when it comes to graphics. Nevertheless, the collaboration with AMD is essential and of the highest relevance to us. Especially in the area of motherboards, we see a very positive development here.”
It’s difficult to say one way or another whether MSI will hop on the next generation of Team Red graphics cards. After all, it’s usually late to the Radeon party, being absent from all three GPU releases at launch. This gives Gigabyte, Asus, and Team Red exclusives like Sapphire, XFX, and PowerColor a head start. Besides, it didn’t go all-in on RX 7000 Series anyway.
Sure, you’ll find it tough spotting 7700 XT and 7800 XT, but it didn’t make many to begin with. MSI had just four RX 7000 models under its belt, contrasting with 147 different Nvidia GeForce RTX 4000 Series variants. Naturally, this casts doubt on whether we’ll see any RX 8000 graphics card from the manufacturer,
The takeaway here is that whatever decisions MSI makes on the graphics front don’t affect its motherboard efforts. That particular AMD partnership seems stronger than ever, quelling the fears we shared alongside fans. MSI MEG X670E ACE sits at the heart of our AMD Ryzen 9 7950X-powered Club386 test bench, powering all our review benchmarks throughout 2024.
If you’ve been holding off on grabbing an MSI Radeon graphics card, it’s probably a little too late. It’s not the end of the world, though, as Sapphire continues to offer some great price drops. Sapphire Pulse RX 7700 XT is currently $399 with 13% off, and Pulse RX 7900 XT has 16% off at $699.99.