G4Ti4600-VT2D8X: With the GeForce FX still MIA, we take a look at their current flagship, the GeForce 4 Ti4600, souped up with AGP8x. The MSI version also breaks away from reference by including their own cooling system.
Lets look at the games included with the video card.
Duke Nukem Manhattan Project.- You can read more about this side-scrolling shooter by reading our review.
Ghost Recon - "A Squad based tactical combat game" which is based on the novels written by Tom Clancy (good for those who like tactical ops games)
This CD includes many demos, such as "Sum of All Fears", "Rally Trophy", "Serious Sam 2", "Zax: The Alien Hunter", "IL-2 Sturmovik", and "Beam Breakers". All in all a varied array of games from first person shooters to car racing simulations to flight combat. Also included in this CD is the full version of the cell shaded game Oni, which was a good game, when it came out a while ago.
Virtual Drive/RestoreIT! - A backup/restore program that allows you to back up the contents of your hard drive and then restore the data. I have no idea why this was included in a video card bundle but if you don't already have a backup/restore program such as Norton Ghost, this is a good alternative.
MSI Multimedia Driver/Utility CD - This CD contains a few older drivers (31.00 and previous), as well as some utilities, such as 3D Turbo Experience (which didn't work for me at all), MSI Live Update (Updates your video BIOS/drivers automatically), MSI GoodMEM (Memory release program), MSI LockBox (security program for Windows users), MSI SecureDoc (Password protection program for documents), MSI WMInfo (Basic windows info), ThinSoft Be Twin (Allows multiple users to use the same computer), Trend PC-cillin (Standard Anti-virus program), E-Color 3Deep (Allows for more accurate color rendering)
WinDVD 5.1 - One of the top DVD players available and it is very nice for MSI to provide this with the video card, as this is something many other companies do not include.
WinCoder/WinProducer - This is included only with the MSI cards that have video-in functions. The software does a good job of providing an all in one solution for capturing/editing and outputting in DVD/VCD/SVCD or DIVX formats. It however as an editing suite is in the low end of the scale of programs, compared to other video editing software.
3D Desktop - This program gives the illusion of a 3D desktop. Unfortunately this program was very slow and processor intensive, which makes it a useless application in my opinion.
Morrowind - "The Elder Scrolls III:Morrowind is an epic, open-ended single-player game where you create and play any kind of character you can imagine." A interesting game for those that like magic based real-time strategy games.
We can see that MSI did include some very nice programs with their video cards, adding to the value of the card, for instance the inclusion of WinDVD, WinCoder/Producer, and even 4 full games. This is something that can help differentiate this card from all the other GeForce 4's out there. For a look at the drivers used by this card, please look at our MSI-8888 review as they are identical.
G4Ti4600-VT2D8X: With the GeForce FX still MIA, we take a look at their current flagship, the GeForce 4 Ti4600, souped up with AGP8x. The MSI version also breaks away from reference by including their own cooling system.
