MSI will be raising the price of its range of graphics cards due to incredibly tight global supplies said chairman Joseph Hsu during a conference call with investors. 

Demand for GPUs, motherboards and gaming laptops is expected to remain very high until at least the end of the year, with MSI poised to profit from the incredible year-on-year growth. MSI’s profits for 2020 were its highest ever, yet were still weaker than investors had expected. 

Across-the-board price rises for MSI GeForce and Radeon graphics cards will no doubt help to assuage investors as MSI benefits from the sensational demand seen globally. No other AIB GPU provider has straight up admitted price rises but we’d imagine to see a ripple effect among AMD and Nvidia’s partners.

As for how large these price rises will be, that's still up on the air. Hsu didn't provide any specifics but, considering demand, there's probably a lot of wiggle room there for MSI.

The end result to you and I is, sadly, probably fairly irrelevant in the near term. If you’re fortunate enough to even be able to get any of these graphics cards in your shopping basket, you’d be even more hard-pressed to get them for a great value price.

I can’t help but look back at the announced MSRP of the likes of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 ($499) and chuckle a little. Newegg ran a raffle last week for the chance to buy an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 for $539.99. A $330 GPU for $540 if you were fortunate enough to win a tech lottery.

In that sense, you can hardly blame MSI’s eyes for lighting up and wanting a bigger slice of the pie that is going toward retailers and resellers. We suspect MSI won’t be alone here either, whether other GPU manufacturers are willing to admit it or not.

Fingers crossed supply can begin to match demand sooner rather than later. Intel is already doing its bit with the announcement of its $20 billion Intel Foundry Services, muscling in on silicon contracting to help the “global chip process” while making a fat stack of cash in the process.