On the 16th of November 2013,
Linus released a video called 'Low End Video Cards Rant & Radeon R7 240 Unboxing & Review',
which was known internally as 'Low end graphics cards are s***'.
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.
Apacer's AS720 is a dual interface SSD with USB 3.1 Type C on one end,
and SATA on the other, with read speeds of up to 540 MB per second
and write speeds of up to 450 MB 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 Freakazoid777.
Michael claimed that he could think of many situations where one would want to buy a low-profile ultra-cheap graphics card,
but that Linus's gamer mind clearly polluted his ability to think outside the box.
A little aggro, but regardless Linus already replied and Michael admitted
that he may have been a little off the point with that one. The point Linus was trying to make
wasn't that no-one could ever use a low-profile graphics card.
The point he was trying to make is that the R7 240
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.
Mygaffer claims that people don't buy these for gaming anyway unless they're ill-informed.
That people people should buy this 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 ill-informed. 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 could pick up something like the GT 210. It's 30 bucks on Amazon compared to 70 for an R7 240,
has DVI, HDMI and VGA connections, is passively cooled and if you spend
35 dollars 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 per performance sweet spot. Linus 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 gonna 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 R7 240, looking at my local used sites like Craigslist, [I] 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 R7 240 any-more,
I went out and bought the newest card that I could find in that price point and what I could find it up being the Nvidia GT 730.
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 R7 240.
I put this on our standard graphics card test bench running alongside an
I7 5930K, in order to not have to worry about bottlenecking at all. And then I tested it against a
6700K, not overclocked, using its integrated GPU: the Intel HD graphics 530.
The results may be a little surprising: the 6700K with its integrated graphics card handily beat the 730 in Tomb Raider,
more or less equalled it in Counter-Strike [Global Offensive] 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 I-GPU 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 low-profile card with the video-outs that you need. Buy used or use your I-GPU or APU.
The only terrible option is buying an entry-level card like the R7 240 or GT 730.
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 'Naruto'.
All of them are professionally subtitled within an hour of their premiere in Japan.
So head over to crunchyroll.com/linus, [and] you get a 30-day free trial of Crunchyroll Premium,
that gives you no ads. You can watch 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 [dollars] a month. So again: crunchyroll.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 that you know: Amazon.
Buying a cool t-shirt like this one in the comments, 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 just check out this video,
where we unbox and review a card that is great to buy used and 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 290.
It's, it's up there.