Radeon R7 240 And 250: Our Sub-$100 Gaming Card Round-Up

Features
By Don Woligroski
published

Now that AMD's Radeon R7 240 and 250 are here, we want to know a little more about what the sub-$100 market looks like. Can the latest Oland-based boards serve up playable performance in the latest titles, or are there other hidden gems to discover?

Test Setup And Benchmarks

Because we want a sense of the entire sub-$100 graphics card market, we're generating two sets of benchmarks. For the first set, we're dropping detail settings and resolutions to the point where very low-cost cards can contend (down to a minimum of 1280x720). The next set is at 1920x1080 at more demanding detail settings.

We've almost completely eliminated mechanical storage in the lab, and instead lean on solid-state drives to alleviate I/O-related bottlenecks. Samsung sent all of our offices 256 GB 840 Pros, so we standardize on these exceptional SSDs.

Naturally, discrete graphics cards require a substantial amount of stable power, so XFX sent along its PRO850W 80 PLUS Bronze-certified power supply. This modular PSU employs a single +12 V rail rated for 70 A. XFX claims that this unit provides 850 W of continuous power (not peak) at 50 degrees Celsius (notably higher than the inside of most enclosures).

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Header Cell - Column 0 Test System
CPUIntel Core i5-2550K (Sandy Bridge), Overclocked to 4.2 GHz @ 1.3 V
MotherboardAsus P8Z77-V LX LGA 1155, Chipset: Intel Z77M
NetworkingOn-Board Gigabit LAN controller
MemoryCorsair Performance Memory, 4 x 4 GB, 1866 MT/s, CL 9-9-9-24-1T
GraphicsXFX Radeon R7 240 DDR3730/750 MHz GPU, 2 GB DDR3 at 900 MHz (1800 MT/s)XFX Radeon R7 250 GDDR51000/1050 MHz GPU, 1 GB GDDR5 at 1150 MHz (4600 MT/s)Sapphire Radeon HD 7730 GDDR5800 MHz GPU, 1 GB GDDR5 at 1125 MHz (4500 MT/s)Reference Radeon HD 6670 GDDR5800 MHz GPU, 1 GB GDDR5 at 1000 MHz (4000 MT/s)Gigabyte Radeon HD 6670 DDR3800 MHz GPU, 1 GB DDR3 at 900 MHz (1600 MT/s)Reference AMD Radeon HD 7750800 MHz GPU, 1 GB GDDR5 at 1125 MHz (4500 MT/s)Gigabyte Radeon HD 77701000 MHz GPU, 1 GB GDDR5 at 1125 MHz (4500 MT/s)Zotac GeForce GT 630 GDDR5810 MHz GPU, 1 GB GDDR5 at 900 MHz (3600 MT/s)Reference Nvidia GT 640900 MHz GPU, 1 GB DDR3 at 891 MHz (1782 MT/s)
Hard DriveSamsung 840 Pro, 256 GB SSD, SATA 6Gb/s
PowerXFX PRO850W, ATX12V, EPS12V
Software and Drivers
Operating SystemMicrosoft Windows 8 Pro x64
DirectXDirectX 11
Graphics DriversAMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta 9.5, Nvidia GeForce 331.93 Beta
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Benchmark Configuration
3D Games
Metro: Last LightVersion 1.0.0.0, DirectX 10, Built-in Benchmark
Grid 2Version 1.6.89.06, Version 1.5.26.05, 25-Sec. Fraps
Assassin's Creed IV:Black FlagVersion 1.04, Custom THG Benchmark, 60-Sec. Fraps
Battlefield 4Version 1.2, Direct X 11, Built-in Benchmark, 60-Sec. Fraps
BioShock InfiniteVersion 1.0.1441711, Built-in Benchmark, Fraps
Don Woligroski
98 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Hazly1979
    This card is slower than HD 7750AMD is playing now for sub par $100

    Watch the language - G
    Reply
  • emad_ramlawi
    No need to read the review, those parts are HD 7750 or the new Nvidia GTX 750 for the WIN

    Watch the language - G
    Reply
  • blackmagnum
    Just buy a bigger PSU and be done with these poor performance-for-the-dollar/watt cards.
    Reply
  • tridon
    These discrete cards that squeeze frames out with very little power drain are great. I recently bought one such cheap AMD-card for my fiancée when she wanted to play Guild Wars 2 with me. Having an aging low cost workstation with a weak power supply "Made in Hell", cards like these were the only option. At least without having to upgrade and tweak other parts of the PC. (Yes I'm lazy ).Don Woligroski: For the few(?) that are in the same situation as me it would be great to se an efficiency chart. Like average frames pr. average watt usage through a benchmark, or something in that vein.
    Reply
  • Martell1977
    My brother has a HP s3500f slimline computer that I thought the R7 240 might work well in (at least better than the Geforce 6150se it has now). Problem is he has a 250w PSU, all the R7 240's list 400w minimum and it seems the only place to get one under $75 is eBay($43, new). 400w seems awfully high for such a low end card...
    Reply
  • cleeve
    12559832 said:
    My brother has a HP s3500f slimline computer that I thought the R7 240 might work well in (at least better than the Geforce 6150se it has now). Problem is he has a 250w PSU, all the R7 240's list 400w minimum and it seems the only place to get one under $75 is eBay($43, new). 400w seems awfully high for such a low end card...

    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.
    Reply
  • cats_Paw
    Cleeve.... not true:http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_hd_7750_and_7770_review,7.htmlA stressed 7770 Requires at least a 400W good PSU (Note that 400W DOES NOT mean 400W on the 12V rail, but 400W in total. If you do that math in a 250W supply you get a lot less power on the 12V rail, who knows maybe 170... Also remmber that the GPU needs a fixed amount of power in a defined amount of cables. This means that if the PSU is not good, it wont be able to juice the GPU well enought).
    Reply
  • Sakkura
    In Metro: Last Light, the GT 640 gets exactly the same FPS and frame time variance at both 720p and 1080p. It looks like you accidentally input the data from one benchmark run in both places.

    *EDIT BY EDITOR*

    You're absolutely right! We fixed the charts, thanks for catching that!
    Reply
  • Sakkura
    12560307 said:
    Cleeve.... not true:http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_hd_7750_and_7770_review,7.htmlA stressed 7770 Requires at least a 400W good PSU (Note that 400W DOES NOT mean 400W on the 12V rail, but 400W in total. If you do that math in a 250W supply you get a lot less power on the 12V rail, who knows maybe 170... Also remmber that the GPU needs a fixed amount of power in a defined amount of cables. This means that if the PSU is not good, it wont be able to juice the GPU well enought).
    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.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    Where do you get that 400W figure from that Guru3D article? The highest measured figure in there says: "System Wattage with GPU in FULL Stress = 231W" and further down they say they estimate the board's power to max out at ~86W which is just above 7A.That would be power measured at the wall which includes PSU losses... and their test system includes water pump for their OC'd i7-965, cold-cathode lighting and a bunch of other unnecessary stuff most low-end systems would not have that brings their idle power up to a whopping 155W instead of the 50-80W range for typical for current Intel-based mainstream setups.
    Reply