XFX R7 240 Core Edition Passive 2GB Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

XFX’s R7 240 Core Edition Passive 2GB DDR3 graphics card holds a $15 (20%) premium over the base R7 240 models. Below you can see retail pricing based in USD. In the UK we are seeing pricing of £51 which is actually very competitive and only a hair over current lowest pricing on R7 240s which is about £46. XFX offer a two year warranty.

Analysing The AMD R7 240

Since this is the first R7 240 we have looked at we will break this conclusion down into two parts – the first part analysing the GPU as a whole and the second analysing what XFX have done with it. The AMD Radeon R7 240 is a GPU which is lacking a reason for existence in the market place. When $20 more gets you 2X the performance, still with a graphics card that does not need any external power connectors, it makes you question the R7 240. If you just need a graphics card to provide you with (multiple) display outputs because your integrated graphics cannot provide that functionality, or you have no integrated graphics, then I still cannot see the logic behind the R7 240 as you can pick up the HD 5450 for as low as $20 if you just need a card that can provide some display outputs. The reality is most modern motherboards and CPUs will offer you this kind of display functionality – especially something like an AMD A8-7600 APU with an FM2+ motherboard. In fact, that’s the “worst” part of the R7 240’s existence: AMD’s entry level Kaveri APU the A8-7600 performs better than this does across the board. Therefore, there is no point of the R7 240 because given its price it is just a poor value proposition. Sure the R7 240 can still play games but you’d have to be using low-medium settings at low resolutions like 1366 x 768 to get a playable experience. The only real win AMD has with the R7 240 is that it walks all over Nvidia’s similarly priced GT 630, which isn’t saying a lot as that is a poor graphics card for the money too.

Examining What XFX Have Done With The R7 240

It is quite clear then that I do not approve of the R7 240 as a GPU, I am certainly not an elitist against low end GPUs – the R7 250 and the R7 250X are both excellent parts for the money – I just struggle to see the value in the R7 240 given how far integrated graphics have come. XFX have been faced with a challenging situation then, trying to flog a dead horse back into life. I like some of what XFX have done – made it passively cooled and low profile – but should that justify a significant premium over the “reference” style cards? I think not. This card also seems quite confused because if this were to be aimed at the gaming market then it would 100% need to have GDDR5 memory and a cooling fan. Were this to be aimed at the HTPC/Media Centre market then it would 100% need to be both single slot and low profile and ideally with a low RPM fan because most HTPC and Media Centre environments have low airflow. It therefore conforms to neither the gaming market, nor the HTPC market, so where does this leave the card? In a confused place. I will reiterate once again that the main use I see for this graphics card – that of 30Hz 4K media playback over HDMI, or other forms of media playback like BluRay, DVD and so on. XFX would have made this card more attractive to the HTPC user by considering dual HDMI and DisplayPort to make media playback options more flexible. You certainly wouldn’t want to use this for gaming. However, the problem with using this as a media playback card is that it would need to end up in a compact HTPC or Media Centre style PC and as I’ve already said the passive and dual slot design makes this use problematic. We saw very good temperatures because we had simulated case fan airflow, in a case with no airflow you could easily encounter issues. If I was building a HTPC or Media Centre style PC for 4K playback a Kaveri APU would be top of my list.

Pros

• Good cooling solution when adequate case airflow is present
• Flexible rear I/O configuration (in terms of layout)
• Low power consumption
• Totally Silent

Cons

• Feeble gaming performance for the price
• Passive cooling makes the card unsuitable for low airflow HTPC/Media Centre environments
• Dual slot design is not ideal for HTPC/ Media Centre environments
• Lacks dual HDMI or DisplayPort for 4K media playback

“XFX’s R7 240 Core Edition Passive 2GB graphics card is a decent solution for very light low resolution gaming or high resolution media playback. This card has the potential to be useful in well ventilated media and HTPC systems as it is capable of 30Hz 4K . However, if you’re looking for an affordable entry into AMD’s R7 series I still think you should opt for the R7 250 as the bare minimum.“

Thank you to XFX for providing this review sample.