MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD OC

Like ASUS, MSI’s claim to fame is their motherboards rather than video cards, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t produced some special video cards in their time. In fact, it’s quite the contrary.

MSI is probably best known for providing kickass game bundles with their graphics cards. Unlike many manufacturers who bundle outdated or unknown games that no one has heard of, MSI goes out of their way to bundle the best games with their graphics cards. This initiative started back in 2003 with their nBox game bundle. The NBox N5900 Ultra kicked things off by shipping with some of the best games released that year, including Battlefield 1942 and Command and Conquer: Generals. For cooling, the N5900 Ultra was equipped with two copper heatsink/fan units that ran quietly. The card even shipped with a USB mouse! It was quite a remarkable achievement that we’ll probably never see again unfortunately.

Since then MSI has remained at the top of their game when it comes to game bundles. AAA titles like Call of Duty and Far Cry have shipped with MSI cards in more recent years.

We’ve also been big fans of the cooling units MSI has integrated onto their cards. MSI was really the first manufacturer to emphasize near silent cooling across their entire of graphics cards. Back in the GeForce 4 days, their TOP Tech Cooling was legendary around here, with MSI cards taking home Editors Choice Awards from us. They even offered a line of GeForce 6800 and 7800 cards that featured variable speed fans that the end user could toggle with the flick of a switch.


MSI’s latest GeForce 8800 GTX card, the NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD OC, doesn’t ship with a fancy cooler, opting instead to use NVIDIA’s stock 8800 GTX heatsink/fan cooling unit, but the card does ship with a free copy of the game Company of Heroes, without a doubt the best RTS released in 2006. Graphically Company of Heroes also supports DirectX 10 furthering your investment in a DX10 card.

For added performance, like many other card manufacturers in this roundup, MSI has chosen to overclock their NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD OC board. The card runs at 610MHz on the GPU, while the board’s memory runs at 1.0GHz (2.0GHz effective). This provides a nice little boost in performance.

What’s really enticing about the NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD OC though is its price. This card is one of the least expensive GeForce 8800 GTX cards on the market right now. Newegg offers the card for just $509.99 right now, with a $20 mail-in rebate dropping the price to $489.99. This is a pretty sweet deal considering you’re also getting a copy of the game Company of Heroes.

In addition to the aforementioned game bundle, MSI also includes two DVI adapters, a component video cable, S-Video cable, and two power adapters with the NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD OC.