AGP 8X has even reached cards which fall into the budget category, so now no matter how (relatively) little you have to spend there is an 8X card available.

Built on a bright red PCB, the MSI MX440S-VTD8X has faster-clocked core and memory speeds than the original MSI G4 MX440. The core speed may have only risen by 5MHz to 275MHz but the memory speed has jumped from 400MHz to 512MHz (256MHz DDR). To allow this, the 64MB of DDR memory uses 3.6ns memory chips as opposed to the previous 4ns ones.

The use of 3.6ns memory chips is interesting as it means the memory should, in theory, be overclockable to 555MHz. And with its large cooler, the heat generated by overclocking the core shouldn't pose any problems.

On the card's back plate are the usual D-Sub VGA, DVI-I and TV out ports. MSI also includes a multimedia box that plugs into the TV-Out port, and provides two S-Video and two RCS ports. Also supplied is a DVI to CRT converter and an S-Video cable.

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You get a pretty good bundle of games and software with the MSI MX440S-VTD8X. The games pack comprises Duke Nukem Manhattan Project (an odd choice since it's not a 3D game), Ghost Recon and Morrowind - The Elder Scrolls III.

The driver CD contains a host of utilities including Virtual Drive/RestoreIT, MSI Live Update (which updates the BIOS and drivers for the card automatically), MSI GoodMEM, a memory release utility, MSI SecureDoc, which is a password protection tool for documents, and several other utilities. You also get WinDVD 5.1 and WinCoder/WinProducer for the movie side of things.