NVIDIA GeForce2/3 Titanium Roundup - January 2002

MSI G3Ti200 Pro-VT

MSI G3Ti200 Pro-VT
Click to Enlarge
GPU	NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 200
Memory	64MB Hynix DDR SDRAM 4.0ns
Cooling - Core	Interlocking fan/heatsink combo
Cooling - Memory	(2) 17 fin interlocking RAMsinks
Temperature - Core	132 F / 55.5 C
TV-Out	Composite Philips SAA7108E
Video-In	S- Video and Composite Philips SAA7108E
Highest Overclock	230/500 MHz
Software/Gaming Bundle	Sacrifice, WinCoder/WinProducer
Average Online Price	$150 (TV-out only)

Following their tradition of building fully featured video cards, the MSI G3Ti200 Pro-VT has lots of what people want on video cards: more cooling, more features, and hardware monitoring.

The cooling setup on the MSI G3Ti200 Pro-VT is similar to that which we have seen on other cards to date. The card features a large heatsink/fan setup for the core and smaller, somewhat integrated RAMsinks for the memory. The cooling method kept the core temperature of the card at 132 degrees Fahrenheit, making it the hottest of all the GeForce3 Ti 200 cards tested. This, fortunately, did not seem to factor into overclocking, where the MSI G3Ti200 Pro-VT fell pretty much right on par with the rest of the cards.

When it comes to features, the MSI G3Ti200 Pro-VT shines. First off, the card has full VIVO functionality thanks to the onboard Philips SAA7108E. For space reasons the card does not feature an S-video out connector but instead fits composite out, S-video in and composite in connectors on the back of the card.

The card also sports hardware monitoring thanks to a Winbond W83L785R chip located on the back of the card. The hardware monitoring chip allows for the fan speed, AGP voltage, and card temperature to be watched. The only place we saw room for improvement on the hardware monitoring side was in the way that the card gets its temperature reading. Rather than mount the thermistor right on top of the GPU core like Leadtek does, MSI makes use of a thermistor that is pushed up so that it is sitting on the outside edge of the heatsink. This more accurately measures heatsink temperature or ambient air temperature but not core temperature.

Unfortunately we were not able to find the MSI G3Ti200 Pro-VT available online at the time of publication. The price quoted above represents the price for the non VIVO version of the card. Let's hope that MSI gets these cards out soon, as they are very impressive.