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The Card
Like I said earlier, this version of the StarForce 822 GeForce 3 has TV-Out and memory heatsinks. Unlike most video cards, the heatsink is actually one big one with a fan in the middle. This provides cooling for the GPU and the ram. It's debatable if the heat from the core gets transfered to the memory, thus decreasing overclocking possibilities, due to the one heatsink-to-share design. I don't know. Maybe someelse can try, but overclocking is always a mixed bag. Other than that, not much to say. I thought it did look cool, because it was silver, but it doesn't look as pretty as the Hercules 3D Prophet and their pin/orb design.
  
On the right, we have the TV and S-Video out. MSI includes the S-Video cable, but you need to buy your own TV-Out one. Why they didn't include it already is beyond me, but since I'm not going to make much use for it, who cares.
Software
MSI includes quite a substantial software bundle. No games are included, but version 3 of PowerDVD is. I've always prefered PowerDVD as a software based player, and it's nice that MSI packages the latest version. Image quality is decent, at least as good as the previous version of PowerDVD. I do find image quality better with WinDVD, but I hate their interface.
They also include their 3D! Turbo 2001 software, which is a small app that contains common display properties. Nothing to write home about, and I didn't bother reinstalling when I updated my video drivers. Speaking of which, the version that was included with my video card were v12.00. MSI offers the Detonator XP drivers on their site, so definently don't use the old ones.
Finally, they include the Ulead Video Studio for video work or something. I'm not sure since I never did any video editing myself before, but for those into these things, enjoy. I didn't bother installing it myself.
Drivers
The MSI driver CD is really out of date. At the time of purchase, approxiamately June of this year, the drivers were version 12.00. I've been running v12.41 since day one, and the newer Detonator XPs since their release. For those who don't know, the newest detonators average 4% to as much as 15% increase in OpenGL speeds at resolutions 1024 and above. Direct 3D benchmarks seem to gain the most from my tests. Your results may vary. Like I said earlier, MSI now offers those drivers on the web. I already installed the reference drivers earlier, so I didn't bother with MSI's Detonator XPs. I figure you'll need them if you want TV-Out and for your display windows to say StarForce 822, rather than GeForce 3.
Update: It seems the drivers available on MSI's site are in fact the nVidia reference drivers. They are infact, not repackaged as I had previously thought.
 
Overclocking
nVidia doesn't enable overclocking tabs by default. You'll need to hunt down and run the "" registry hack to enable the sliders. According to their website, the 3D!Turbo tool is capable of overclocking as well, but either the shipping version is missing it, the website is wrong, or I'm just plain blind. Either way, so long as you aren't using the WQHL drivers, the will work.
Overclocking the MSI StarForce 822 was a mixed affair for me. Given the impressive looking cooling the video card had, I expected some decent overclocking results. With the system temperature averaging about 31C, and CPU idle temps about 38C, I managed an overclock of 230 core, and 515 memory. This is up from the stock 200/460. I did manage 235/530, but the video card would start giving me weird texturing and tearing after a half hour or so. I actually got up to 240/530, and it was able to boot into Windows, but then it'd just reboot, forcing me into safe mode. I thought this was a driver issue, but updating to the Detonator XPs didn't resolve this issue for me. Still, 230/515 is a nice bump. I was able to run my 3D Mark 2001 batch test which goes for about 8 hours, and all was well.
Update: Well, I'm getting odd lockups with a 230/515 overclock now. I've still managed to finish the benchmarks and write up the review, but it seems that even 230/515 is too high. Let this be a lesson about overclocking. Doesn't matter what you see on the 'net, everyone's milage will vary. For the record, I know 220/500 is rock solid for my video card. Good luck in your dreams of GeForce 3 Ultra dreams.
Before I get into the bechmarks though, I do want to say that like CPUs, video cards will eventually degrade over time if you overclock it. It's never happened to me, but I see a lot of images or read stories of image corruption after a year of oveclocking, and the video card continues to do so even after clocking it back. This happens to CPUs as well, but usually not as quickly. Performance gains are negligable in real world apps, and I don't think it's going to make much of a difference whether you overclock or not. But hey, it's your 350$ GeForce 3, so it's up to you.
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