MSI Talks US Tariffs, RTX 20-Series Prices and Availability

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Chinese media outlet PConline had a sit-down with MSI executives this week and discussed with them the repercussions of the U.S.-China trade war and its impact on graphics cards, more specifically, the GeForce RTX 20-series shortage and MSI's upcoming RTX 2080 Ti Lightning graphics card.

(Image credit: MSI)

MSI recently held its MSI Gaming New Appreciation Conference in Shanghai. During the event, PConline asked if the the ongoingU.S.-China trade war will raise the manufacturing costs for graphics cards and processors. Liao Wei, Deputy General Manager of MSI Global Multimedia Business Unit, noted he believes that the prices for the GeForce RTX 20-series should remain stable and free of hikes since the main components are not produced in China. Nvidia's Turing GPUs are manufactured by TSMC, which is located in Taiwan, while their memory chips come from Samsung and Hynix fabs, which are stationed in South Korea and the U.S., respectively. Liao also stated that AMD's processors are produced in the Middle East, so are also in a safe zone for now.

In terms of the GeForce RTX 20-series shortage, Liao confirmed that RTX 2080 Ti shipments are indeed very tight at the moment. Due to the insanely huge size of the Turing die, TSMC is currently facing low production yields. The RTX 2080 Ti's die measures 754mm², which is 60 percent larger than the 471mm² die employed in the previous Geforce GTX 1080 Ti. Therefore, Nvidia is focusing on the RTX 2080 instead and doesn't supply many RTX 2080 Ti chips to its AIC (add-in-card) partners, according to the report.

Also, it doesn't help that the RTX 20-series graphics cards are more complicated to produce. To put things into perspective, a GTX 1080 Ti is comprised of 1,600 components. On the other hand, the RTX 2080 Ti is made up of 2,600 components, the RTX 2080 has 2,400 components, while the RTX 2070 uses 2,200 components. 

Lastly, when asked about the RTX 2070, MSI said that production has commenced, and the company expects to launch its RTX 2070 graphics cards on October 17. MSI also mentioned that the RTX 2080 Ti will receive the luxurious Lightning treatment. Apart from pursuing the best overclocking performance humanly possible, the RTX 2080 Ti Lightning will also come with revamped aesthetics and customizable RGB lighting. MSI didn't disclose the  RTX 2080 Ti Lightning's price tag, but the company did confirm that it will be available very soon.

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Zhiye Liu
Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

17 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Snipergod87
    There's also no reason to buy a 2080 over a 1080 Ti currently either.
    Reply
  • venym
    So in answer to the headline, NONE, no impact on the price or availability of the 20-series. All due to die size and low yields. Fake News at it again.
    Reply
  • spdragoo
    And unless you're looking for 4K performance on multiple monitors, or somehow have a 4K/144Hz monitor, there's no reason to buy the 2080TI over the 1080TI.
    Reply
  • kiniku
    No one is buying a 2000 series card anyway. Way overpriced hype.
    Reply
  • Samuel White
    Tom's been going downhill fast recently with all the fake news. The "Just Buy It" RTX post when the cards were announced to influence people to buy something they 100% do not need unless their already 1080 series is slow. Now this Fake News post about how the "trade war" is affecting the sales when its not and its just people not paying $1000 for something they do not need when its only a 20-30% boost at the best. Shame, Shame on your Tom.
    Reply
  • gggplaya
    I wouldn't call this "Fake News" as I see no questionable information here. However, the title is very "Clickbait" as I was expecting there to be a negative impact. However, part of that was due to an assumption I made, that tariff's on Chinese goods would create an impact.
    Reply
  • venym
    The problem is those that suffer from TDS will read the headline and not need to dig deeper to reinforce their distorted world view. In today's sound bite day and age it is easy for someone to read a headline that states that MSI will explain how the "trade war" is affecting production and not need to actually read the article. Basically the headline is a lie of implication.
    Reply
  • therickmu25
    The saddest part is I'm sure they wish the China / US trade 'Negotiations' not WAR, would negatively impact the price in the worst way. "The end justifies the means"
    Reply
  • newsonline5000000
    Liao also stated that AMD's processors are produced in the Middle East, so are also in a safe zone for now.

    How is this true in anyways ? Middle eastern countries cant produce anything on their own nor have any research and development at all .. they cant produce CPUs at all . They dont even have the technology to do it.

    Reply
  • s1mon7
    21391685 said:
    Liao also stated that AMD's processors are produced in the Middle East, so are also in a safe zone for now.

    How is this true in anyways ? Middle eastern countries cant produce anything on their own nor have any research and development at all .. they cant produce CPUs at all . They dont even have the technology to do it.

    Huh? You do realize Intel does their research, development and manufacturing in Israel, which is a middle eastern country? That's also where their best architectures were created (the "Core" architecture, then Sandy and Ivy Bridge) and where they're working on the successor to the Core architecture. Intel's largest performance jumps in terms of architecture happened almost solely thanks to the Israeli R&D.

    GlobalFoundries, which manufactures the Ryzen processors, has its most modern fabs in Abu Dhabi. Now, normally the comment of "major region X can't produce that tech" would be not only ignorant but in this case, the government of Abu Dhabi actually owns GlobalFoundries. There are areas of the middle east that have little to none chip-making talent, and there are also those where there's a lot of world-leading talent.

    To answer to the other comment, the article is not fake news in any way. I was curious myself, but the article makes it clear that there's little to none Chinese components that go into the making of those cards (dodged a bullet since the US does not consider Taiwan to be part of China) so tariffs do not affect them.

    Reply