Micro Star International is one of the Tier-1 manufacturers of motherboards, graphics cards, and other computer related equipment based in Taiwan. MSI has an extensive line of video cards including parts based upon NVIDIA and ATI chips. MSI offers video cards based upon every ATI or NVIDIA chip available, giving the user the choice of which card to buy. They have been in business almost since the dawn of the modern PC and at one point almost dominated ASUS in terms of name branding and recognition.
NVIDIA launched their GeForce GTS 250 last month as a $129 video card. This is a rebranded 9800GTX+ which is in fact a rebranded 8800GTS 512MB. The reasons for the rebranding include the confusing naming scheme of NVIDIA video cards (where higher numbers do not indicate higher performance), and a need to organize video card names. After all, it would look unwieldy to have a GeForce 10600GT for a mainstream card next year or a GeForce 10200 for the value segment. On the other hand, NVIDIA has been pretty stagnant in their card development over the last year or two with no mainstream version of the GTX280 in sight. It is likely that NVIDIA will forgo the development of mainstream cards until the next generation hits the streets.
