I don't know why people get excited about video cards. I don't know why people want more and more frames per second. I don't know why someone would pay 600 bucks for nothing. I have taken the liberty to quote a post from a forum. I hope that the author won't be mad especially because we'll discuss these ideas. I don't know how many people remember the times when the computer had no monitor. The monitor was not an out of ordinary idea, but since a fast memory able to store a matrix of pixels was not possible to make those days people had to interfere with the machine in other ways. It's natural for people to get excited about things able to render other things as close to reality. The human eye is limited: from the mathematical point of view if we look around us the number of frames per second is infinite, but the eye makes no difference between 50 and 100 frames per second. Powerful video cards are able to do more than 200 frames per second! People need frames per second because in order to move from x to y the computer needs to follow a program which is the same every time and takes a time to complete. When the program outputs something (a game) the video performance may impact the overall experience although from the visual point of view you see the same thing. Think to Quake and remember the difference between a rotation around the axis at 30 frames and at 150 frames. At 30 frames you play the game very difficult, the enemy behind you kills before you can turn and eliminate him. At 150 frames / second you are able to eliminate the enemy, also you don't see anything new (you barely see something). Most important is resolution: a video card able to do 200 frames / second at 640 x 480 should be able to do 50 at 1280 x 1024. Just look around you and notice the resolution: unlimited. That's why people want to pay 600 bucks for a video card. The reality is expensive and most people know this.
When GeForce3 first hit the market people started asking questions like the ones above. Most people involved in computer graphics said that the industry was not prepared for such a powerful card. We should not forget that hardware is nothing without software to drive it. Unfortunately software is several steps behind hardware and too much power may be a waste. Fortunately we'll take a look to GeForce3 tehnology today.
We have a card based on GeForce3 and I'll give it a try: StarForce 822 from MSI.

First look

The card comes in a large but narrow box. The package is high quality and contains two drivers and utils CDs, one CD with Ulead Video Studio 4.0 Basic SE and one CD with Idea Box containing 64 avi clips for use in home made videos. There is also a S-video cable, but MSI didn't include composite video cables. The card is not very large, but it succeded to reach the DIMM slots on all motherboards we tried it with. The card version is 2.0/TVD. MSI came up on the market with this card quite fast; I guess that's one of the reasons why it uses the nVidia reference design.

On a very brief look you can notice the powerful card cooling. The nVidia Geforce3 is cooled down by a large heatsink and a fan. The use of thermal grease must be appreciated also. Memory chips are also cooled by two RAM-sinks which adhere to the memory surface using thermal tape. Under the RAM-sinks you can find EliteMT 3.8ns memory, a very popular solution between GeForce3 manufacturers. The overall aspect of the card is impressive especially because the heatsink and the RAM-sinks look as being only one part. I liked that the card is shipped with a VIVO daughter card powered by a Philips SAA710E chip. This daughter card has S-Video and composite video outputs and a composite video input. You can take a look to this daughter card in the left.

The quality of the components is above average. MSI has always used good quality electronic parts and StarForce 822 is no exception. MSI didn't include a manual, but you can read several basic installation instructions on the small briefcase that holds the drivers CDs.

MSI StarForce 822 Product Picture

Let's see what you can expect after you take the card off from the protective bag. But first let me introduce you to GeForce3 technology.