MSI StarForce 822 Retail GeForce3 64MB

The Drivers

MSI chooses to use NVIDIA's reference drives as their shipping drivers, which makes for easy updates but can leave out some advanced features we have seen in other driver sets. In an attempt to make up for this, MSI bundles their cards with the custom 3d!Turbo 2000 tweaking utility.

This utility allowed for a variety of common features to be accessed in a central location. The color and monitor screens are like ones we have seen before, but the information and mult-desktop screens really got our attention. The information page was much more helpful than standard information pages, including details that are typically on listed with a 3rd party information utility. The multi-desktop utility was a somewhat useful utility that allowed for, you guessed it, multiple (virtual) desktops. Our one big complaint with this utility was that it was not that easy to access and view what is running on other desktops. But, for a free multiple desktop utility, the multi-desktop function included in 3d!Turbo 2000 was not too bad and certainly better than nothing.

The latest version of the 3D!Turbo 2000 utility set provides overclocking support via an easy to use overclocking slider. Two icons, one representing the core and the other the memory, lay to the right of slider bars that control clock speeds. This is a nice feature that allows for easy overclocking without the need for a third party utility. It is especially useful on the GeForce3, as the "coolbits" registry key only allows memory speeds up to 500MHz.