MSI StarForce 822 Retail GeForce3 64MB

It was only a few hours after our publication of the initial MSI StarForce 822 GeForce3 that we heard from MSI. It is not uncommon to hear from manufacturers after a review, however this time MSI offered new insight into the StarForce 822 that promised to change our perspective of the card.

It seems that the StarForce 822 that we received and reviewed is not the card that is available in volume from on-line sites. Instead MSI stated that the StarForce 822 that we looked at was "pre-production" card that found its way onto a few e-store shelves. MSI promises that less than 1,000 of these "initial" StarForce 822 cards ever left their factory and that the card has now been replaced with a new version that promises to fix some of the issues we had with the initial StarForce 822.

MSI also promised that production would quickly ramp-up on this new version of the card, meaning that we can expect retail availability to increase dramatically in the next few weeks. The reason that we had so many problems finding the original StarForce 822, MSI says, was due to the fact that MSI held off mass production of the cards until the new board design could be implemented. Now that the design is finalized, MSI promises that their card will be as available as other key GeForce3 players.

We felt it was important to report on the original StarForce 822 because there are some users out there who may be in a position to buy this version of the card (remember, around 1,000 did make their way out). We felt it was equally important to take a look a the new version of the StarForce 822, the one that the majority of users considering a GeForce3 will find themselves in a position to buy. With this in mind, MSI quickly sent us the new StarForce 822. From the looks of it, it seems that MSI was correct: it makes up where the first version left off.