Bundled Software

The fact is that most manufacturers tend to skimp pretty heavily when it comes to documentation and software packages. The general assumption seems to be that if you've bought a video card you are perfectly aware of how to install it-and included software is often limited to a driver disc (with some companies offering a DVD Decoder as well).

The MSI software bundle includes a set of drivers (though they are the older NVIDIA 12.42 Detonator series), software for the included 3D glasses, a DVD Decoder and video editing package, a variety of 3rd party utilities including DirectX 8.0, and a full version of the game Sacrifice.

Two of the utilities included are MSI's LiveUpdate/LiveBIOS software and their own overclocking utility, MSI Clock. The MSI Clock software allows for overclocking of your card without the need to install the coolbits.reg patch, while the LiveUpdate feature automatically checks the MSI website for BIOS and VGA driver updates.

It is very important to remember that the SafeBIOS feature of the Pro-VTG ONLY functions if the LiveBIOS utility is used to update the BIOS of the card. If you use a 3rd party utility to flash the BIOS on the chip you'll lose the backup BIOS and the card's ability to recover from a bad flash. Consider yourself warned.

I decided to check the MSI website to determine whether or not it was actually kept updated with recent driver updates and was pleasantly surprised to see that NVIDIA drivers up to 21.88 were kept on the site. While NVIDIA has since released 23.11, these drivers have been extremely buggy and numerous people have reported problems which may be why MSI has chosen not to host them.