Tuesday, October 9th 2018
MSI Talks about NVIDIA Supply Issues, US Trade War and RTX 2080 Ti Lightning
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 defective 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
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.
30 Comments on MSI Talks about NVIDIA Supply Issues, US Trade War and RTX 2080 Ti Lightning
Yeah well done nVidia, awesome marketing strategy knowing full well the card would be expensive to begin with, knowingt full well nVidia tax and then 3rd party's have to find a way to make a profit too.
I'm mostly surprised by how production costs for Turing is so much higher than Pascal. What are these "components" he's describing?
Hynix memory is manufactured in the USA? Color me surprised.
As for youtubers, I pay no attention unless it's from a author with a reputable web site. Id rather see Bert and Ernie do tech reviews than Jayz2cents and Linus. Hightechlegion, aliebabeltech, hardwarecanucks , Bill Owen and Singularity Computers are the only ones i find worthwhile.
Do you think all these "little" parts are free?
Just compare that to the 1080Ti and you'll see that just the power delivery circuitry is a lot more complex.
Instead of normal solid state capacitors, they're using what looks like tantalum capacitors, those are some 4-5x more expensive for starters.
GDDR6 is most likely more expensive than GDDR5X, as it's "new" technology and production has most likely not ramped up fully.
Obviously the GPU itself is more expensive, as it's a bigger chip, but that one is on Nvidia.
Then take into account that the machines that are picking and placing the components can only operate so fast. A decent SMT machine today can do 100,000 components per hour, but this also depends on the PCB layout and the type of components. However, a PCB normally goes through a couple of these machines and in-between there are reflow ovens that the boards have to pass through to solder the components to the board. The production lines aren't exactly moving at more than a snails pace, so it takes time to do these things. Once the boards have had all the components placed and soldered, they're then both manually checked and these days most likely machine checked for any issues with the component placement and soldering. This takes time. Finally the parts that have to be added by hand are are added and the boards and then going through yet another reflow oven to solder those parts in place. Once that's done, you have people fitting the cooling to the cards and that's obviously a manual job, which takes time. Then you have to test the cards to make sure they're working properly. Normally there should be a burn-in test that can take 24h or even longer.
So the more complex the PCB is, the longer it takes to make and the more expensive it gets.
How could nVidia achieve that? Mysterious...
It's also a rather power hungry chip, so it needs good power delivery, which means a more expensive board.
I did a rough count and it looks like the RTX 2080Ti has 3x as many tantalum capacitors as the GTX 1080Ti, both being MSI cards in this case.
Even the Titan X (Pascal) looks simple in comparison, which makes the RTX 2080Ti look like a huge failure from a design standpoint.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was the most complex consumer card that Nvidia has made to date and I'm not talking about the GPU itself, but rather the PCB design.