The box is void of useful information, other than learning the word for bandwidth in 6 languages.  I was actually a bit surprsed to see the box say "TV-Out supported", even though the card has no way to transmit signal directly to a television.  I imagine the box was printed based on the GeForce2 spec.

While the box was disappointing, the "3D AGPhantom Software Kit" inside the box was great.  This is where the newbie finds the instructions on installing the card and software.  The instructions include a few of the basic settings to get the user underway.

Everything falls into place. Remove old card, seat the new card and insert the driver disk, all described in the Software Kit. Once the MSI drivers are up and runing, you install MSI's version of Blaster Control which is tagged as 3DTurbo. 3DTurbo gives you some solid functionality in just a few clicks starting with an icon in the system tray. Let's take a look.

3DTurbo is more or less a tweak utility for all of your desktop features. Other settings and adjustments, such as OpenGL or Direct3D options, use the reference driver layout outside of 3DTurbo with a nifty looking icon replacing the NVIDIA eye.

Along with 3Dturbo, MSI includes WinDVD 2000, which does utilize GeForce motion compensation. (I have heard it is buggy with the Det3's but this has not been verified by testing.) Typically, you can expect about 10-20% less CPU usage with motion compensation enabled.

The lack of games in a card's software bundle is becoming more and more commonplace. I feel this is a good thing because I don't want to pay extra for a Demo version of Decent3 that I will never install. The best policy is to leave them out and drop the price or supply a game voucher that allows you to choose which game you want. MSI chose to pas on a bundled game or downloadable freebie to keep the cost down.

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