Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is a beautiful-looking game. But it's also quite a challenge graphically. We had to drop the title's detail settings as low as they'd go at 1280x720 to give these entry-level cards a chance.


The Radeon HD 6670 DDR3 outperforms XFX's Radeon R7 240 by a small amount, though it's significant enough if you consider 30 frames per second as low as you'll go for a smooth experience. Nvidia's GeForce GT 630 shows its age, but the rest of these cards perform quite well.


Frame time variance is very low across our tests, which is ideal. Raw performance is the limiting factor in this game.
Can any of these cards contend with an increase to 1920x1080?


Only the Radeon R7 250, HD 7750, and HD sustain minimum frame rates close to 30 FPS at this resolution.


Despite low frame rates, variance isn't bad at all.
- The Sub-$100 Graphics Card Market
- Introducing The Radeon R7 240 And 250
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Results: Metro: Last Light
- Results: Grid 2
- Results: BioShock Infinite
- Results: Battlefield 4
- Results: Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
- Power And Temperature Benchmarks
- When It Comes To Graphics, $100 Goes A Long Way
A 400W is overkill if you're running a power-efficient CPU.
Look at the results, the most this system puilled with the R7 240 is 122 Watts under load. That's the whole system, with an overclocked Core i5-2500K!
A good 250W PSU should be fine. AMD is kind of recommending overkill here, but they do that to protect people from poor quality PSUs. A 250W HP shouldn't be a problem as long as the platform isn't power hungry.
Watch the language - G
Watch the language - G
A 400W is overkill if you're running a power-efficient CPU.
Look at the results, the most this system puilled with the R7 240 is 122 Watts under load. That's the whole system, with an overclocked Core i5-2500K!
A good 250W PSU should be fine. AMD is kind of recommending overkill here, but they do that to protect people from poor quality PSUs. A 250W HP shouldn't be a problem as long as the platform isn't power hungry.
*EDIT BY EDITOR*
You're absolutely right! We fixed the charts, thanks for catching that!
A good 250W power supply will have 18-20 amps on the 12V rail, which is fine for the R7 240.
I don't know why you bring up the 7770, it clearly draws a lot more power than the R7 240.
We were talking about the R7 240, not the 7770.
Even the 7770 is only a ~86W card... just barely high enough to require a 6pin PCIe power connection.
What? What the heck are you talking about?