On the 16th of November 2013, Linus released a video called Low-End Video
Cards Rant and Radeon R7240 Unboxing and
Review, which was known internally as low-end graphics cards are. You can
click here to go check it out. If you do go check it out, scroll down a bit to
the comments. This is why we were determined that we needed a follow-up. I
will address some of those that commented and their misconceptions and
try to add a bit of my own points to the conversation through some interesting
benchmarks. Let's do this.
Apacers AS720 is a dual interface SSD
with USB 3.1 typeC on one end and SATA
on the other with read speeds of up to 540 megabytes per second and right
speeds of 450 megabytes per second. Check the link in the video description
to learn more. The first comment I'm going to address was from Michael H aka
Freakazoid 777. Michael claimed that he
could think of many situations where one would want to buy a lowprofile ultra
cheap graphics card, but that Lionus's gamer mind clearly polluted his ability
to think outside the box. A little aggro, but regardless, Lionus already
replied, and Michael admitted that he may have been a little off the point
with that one. The point Lionus was trying to make wasn't that no one could
ever use a lowprofile graphics card. The point he was trying to make is that the
R seven240 is actually too expensive for
the performance it delivers, making it a terrible value. This is not only true
for games, but also for any application that relies on GPU power. So, thinking
outside the box, if you needed the compute performance, it just isn't
there. Macaffer claims that people don't buy these for gaming anyway, unless
they're illinformed. that people should buy these if, say, they have an older
motherboard that the video out died on or they just need more ports in general.
Sorry, but that would also be illinformed. If someone just needs more
video out ports, buying this card is literally throwing money away. If you
just need a graphics card so you can hook up more monitors, you can pick up
something like the GT210. It's 30 bucks on Amazon compared to the 70 for an
R7240. Has DVI, HDMI, and VGA
connections. is passively cooled and if you spend $35 total, it has free
shipping. So, grab yourself a couple snacks and a drink. Within a couple
days, you've got some nom noms and a GPU for half the price that is going to be
equally capable of driving your extra monitors for non-gaming or compute
applications. If you don't care about low profile, which is likely, but your
problem lies more on the affordability side of things, I would still definitely
not ever buy this card. There are comments talking about needing a
graphics card but not having the money to get to the price performance sweet
spot. Lionus suggested just waiting and saving. But we also understand that this
isn't an option for everyone. If this is
your budget and it's not going to change, that's fine. Buy something used.
Check out Scrapyard Wars. We build pretty kick-ass computers for like 300
bucks all the time. and the budget that you'd have for something like an R
seven240 looking at my local used sites like Craigslist could get a GTX 660,
which would kick its ass in terms of performance. So, no, that's not a valid
argument. Basically, if all you need is a low profile card, get a different one.
If you don't care about gaming performance, this is too expensive for your use case. Find something else. If
you don't have the money for something new that's better, buy used. We're not
trying to attack people that don't have the money. For the vast majority of my
life, that's where I was at. We're trying to help them to not waste the
little that they have on trash that offers no benefit. Okay, so that
addresses, I hope, the issues people had with the first video, which brings us to
the new part of this video, the 2016 update, if you will. Since we don't have
the R7240 anymore, I went out and bought the newest card that I could find in
that price point. And what I could find ended up being the NVIDIA GT730. We went
with the green team this time to demonstrate that we weren't picking on AMD specifically last time around and
that the problem is actually universal. It's basically the same story as the R
seven240. I put this on our standard graphics card test bench running
alongside an i7 5930 K in order to not
have to worry about bottlenecking at all. And then I tested it against a 6700
K not overclocked using its integrated GPU, the Intel HD Graphics 530. The
results may be a little surprising. The 6700 K with its integrated graphics card
handily beat the 730 in Tomb Raider. More or less equaled it in Counterstrike
and didn't do quite as bad as it did in Far Cry 4. In every scenario, it was
better. The 730 just had its ass handed to it by an integrated GPU. I realize
this scenario won't be applicable to a ton of people, but if you will be able
to save up for more, but need a system now and don't have quite the money for
everything that you wanted, instead of stepping down your platform and buying
something like a 730, just wait and run
your iGPU for a bit and get something more sensible later on. Basically, what
we're trying to say is that there are lots of good approaches. Buy a cheaper
lowprofile card with the video that you need. Buy used or use your iGPU or APU.
The only terrible option is buying an entry-level card like the R7240 or
GT730. Speaking of good solutions, Crunchyroll
is a site created by anime fans for anime fans, which usually is actually a
pretty good solution. They offer the most current episodes of new shows
straight from Japan, like Erased or Active Raid. And they have large
collections of popular anime series that everyone has heard of, like One Piece or
Nudo. All of them are professionally subtitled within an hour of their
premiere in Japan. So, head over to crunchyroll.com/lininus. You get a 30-day free trial of
Crunchyroll Premium. That gives you no ads. You can watch it on whatever device
you want. Consoles, even phones, tablets, laptops, computers, 1080p
streaming. Like I said, episodes straight from Japan. And if you like it
after those 30 days, it's only $6.95 a month. So again, crunchy.com/Linus.
Check it out. Thanks for watching, guys. If that video sucked or if you still
somehow disagree with us, you know what to do. But if it was awesome, get
subscribed, hit the like button, or even consider supporting us directly by using
our Amazon affiliate code to shop for stuff at, you know, Amazon. Buy a cool
t-shirt like this one in the comment in the description down below thingy or
with a direct monthly contribution through the forum. Now that you're done doing all that kind of stuff, you're
probably wondering what to watch next. So, click the button in the top right hand corner to check out this video
where we unbox and review a card that is great to buy used. It has been featured
on Scrapyard Wars twice. It's not that cheap, but the value is actually pretty
good. So, yeah, it's a it's a 290. It's
an R9. It's an R9 290. It's it's up there.