Low End Video Cards Rant & Radeon R7 240 Unboxing & Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,038 words · ~5 min read
0:06
Corsair's raptor line of quality gaming peripherals has the features you need to
0:10
win at a price you'll like click now to learn more
0:15
now i get criticized a fair bit for not really criticizing products enough i
0:20
think some people feel and for not looking at lower end products that are
0:24
more affordable a lot of the time we tend to get really focused on the high-end sexy stuff so to address both
0:30
of those things i'm gonna be taking a look at the r7240 a product that sucks
0:35
and is cheap so we're gonna go ahead and take this out of the box to be clear i'm
0:39
not particularly criticizing MSI here there's nothing different about their r7
0:44
240 implementation that makes it worse than anyone else's it's just that this
0:48
graphics card for 80 dollars makes absolutely no sense and nobody should
0:52
buy it so let's go ahead and have a look at the card itself it has a downward
0:55
draft cooler which i guess is is what it is it's got a heat sink that's like
1:00
indicative of how much power you can expect this thing to have and then it's
1:04
also got a full-size bracket or you can replace that with two half size brackets
1:08
so that you can install it in a low profile case although you won't be
1:11
having a very satisfactory gaming experience with it anyway it comes with
1:15
a driver disc and that is pretty much all so i'd like to take a moment to talk
1:19
about the concept of price to performance yes this is an 80 card but
1:23
even if it was a 60 card on special promo it still makes absolutely no sense
1:28
to buy because there are options that cost just a little bit more that deliver
1:32
so much better performance you see guys there is a sweet spot buying a 500
1:37
computer or 400 computer is not a sweet
1:40
spot experience you are actually getting less for your money by buying something
1:44
that is less expensive similarly when you start to spend a fortune on gtx
1:48
titans or 780s or you know r9 290xs you
1:52
are similarly getting less for your money that is why graphics cards like
1:56
these exist these are the Radeon 7770
1:59
and the r7260x so this is the last gen product
2:04
so it will tend to be a very good deal and the 260x is a current gen product so
2:08
it carries a bit of a price premium right now but you can still see that it
2:11
is a much better value than this so low
2:14
end products um i guess without further ado let's get into the benchmarks so
2:19
here's dirt 3. we're running at 1080p so any reasonable gaming experience is
2:23
going to be at 1080p these days we're running 4x uh msaa so that's
2:28
anti-aliasing and we're running on high or ultra so both of these graphics card
2:32
this one for about a hundred dollars and this one for about a hundred and forty
2:36
dollars run this game very satisfactorily you're having a great
2:39
gaming experience on our standard test bench this one in spite of having the
2:43
benefit of using one of the best cpus available that is overclocked can manage
2:46
a meager 18 FPS you will have an even worse experience on your computer this
2:51
game is not playable at high details at 1080p far cry 3. this is more of a
2:56
hardcore title so we weren't really expecting this to do very well but guys
2:59
the performance difference here considering the price this gets 28
3:03
frames per second this gets nine frames
3:07
per second nine frames per second it is one third the performance and it costs
3:12
more than half as much that isn't reasonable that doesn't make any sense
3:16
the sweet spot for this one is probably going to be more like the 7770 which
3:20
costs just about 25 more than an r7 240
3:24
and performs more than doubly as well delivering a very playable experience
3:29
particularly once you turn anti-aliasing off even running that game at pretty
3:32
high settings next up we've got tomb raider fairly mainstream title third
3:36
person adventure game all that kind of noise so both of these games at ultra
3:41
without tres fx did i say games because i meant graphics cards deliver a
3:44
playable experience here averaging 40 to 51 FPS this okay again costs about 25
3:51
less than a 70 and manages a meager just
3:54
over one third of the performance this you guys is why i don't focus on low end
3:59
stuff and this is why i don't generally make videos about stuff that i think is
4:03
stupid because it just makes for a video where i haven't actually told you
4:06
anything useful about what to what to buy um i guess i have don't buy low end
4:13
junk because it doesn't make sense you're better off saving your pennies
4:18
for like another couple weeks another couple allowances and getting something
4:22
that delivers a much much better value
4:26
that is all my friends thank you for checking out this unboxing and
4:30
cautionary tale about the r7 240 i
4:33
apologize to AMD and MSI for anything that i said that might offend them about
4:37
this video but let's face it guys low end cards are stupid and they make no
4:41
sense and so there you go you should just get
4:45
something a little bit better and pay a little bit more actually a lot better
4:49
so deal with it don't forget to like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it
4:53
leave a comment if you have any thoughts to share with me about maybe you think
4:56
that these make sense i mean they have HDMI so they can carry out you know what
5:00
most onboard graphics that supports all that stuff too these days um and as
5:04
always don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips from unboxings reviews and other computer videos