Last week’s Gamescom saw AMD finally gave us a date for its Navi 32 GPUs, and it’s not far off. The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT will launch on September 6. AMD has now provided a list of its nine launch partners for the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT release date, including heavy-hitter AIBs like Gigabyte and Asus. MSI, however, is conspicuously absent from the roster.
It’s not the first time MSI has declined to participate in AMD GPU launches. While it offered its own Ventus model of the AMD Radeon RX 7600, MSI didn’t develop an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT straight off the bat, instead waiting a few months to release its own iteration. When that model did ship, it was equipped with previous gen coolers, suggesting MSI didn’t exactly pull out all the stops to develop a cutting-edge version of one of team red’s most powerful GPUs. The reason for MSI’s antipathy towards AMD graphics cards isn’t clear, but there’s no doubt it seems keener on Nvidia’s GeForce pixel pushers, as it rarely misses a team green launch.
Luckily for AMD, other add in board partners have seen fit to invest in the Navi 32 GPUs from the off, albeit with seemingly dampened enthusiasm. Asus, for example, has revealed three custom models across both the RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT, four fewer than it created for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070.
Of course, MSI being absent from the list of launch partners for the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT release date doesn’t mean the Taiwanese company won’t eventually get in on the action. At any rate, we’re curious to see how team red’s midrange offering can compete with team green behemoths like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070.