According to Tom’s Hardware, MSI has been on the blower to confirm it has no plans to manufacture AMD GPUs “this generation,” meaning MSI has packed its bags and left AMD to fend for itself.

Given MSI’s dwindling support for Radeon cards over the past few years, this move isn’t entirely surprising—but it does raise questions about the company’s long-term intentions.

MSI was once a devoted AMD ally, releasing 45 models of RDNA 2 cards, but when RDNA 3 arrived, that number collapsed to just four. Now, with RDNA 4, MSI has walked away altogether. Meanwhile, it continues to churn out a massive number of Nvidia GPUs, with the RTX 4090 alone receiving a dozen different MSI variants.

This has led to speculation that MSI might be trying to step into EVGA’s old shoes as a premier Nvidia partner. With EVGA having rage-quit the graphics card business entirely after falling out with Nvidia, there’s a gap for a manufacturer willing to throw its full weight behind Team Green.

Allocating its resources to Nvidia’s upcoming RTX 50-series (Blackwell) GPUs might be a strategic play to secure better pricing or incentives from the dominant market leader.

Nvidia still owns the gaming GPU market, with 83 per cent of the Steam Hardware Survey share compared to AMD’s meager 11 per cent.

MSI’s decision may be based on cold, hard economics. AMD’s Radeon RX 9070 series has been flying off shelves, but MSI’s decision was likely made a year ago when the future of RDNA 4 was anything but certain.

If AMD left board partners guessing about final pricing and margins—something that’s been rumoured—it would only reinforce MSI’s reluctance to commit resources to a platform that might not deliver the expected return.

Meanwhile, new players like Acer are stepping in to fill the void, entering the US market as an AMD (and Intel) GPU manufacturer. It seems AMD isn’t exactly desperate to hold onto MSI, but whether that will hurt Radeon’s long-term viability in the AIB market remains to be seen.