Which is better ASUS R7 240 or SAPPHIRE R7 240 ?

[Bubbleawsome]

Angel, if you could try posting in your native language here I'm sure someone here could reply better. We seem to have a language barrier.

 

[omaudio]

Just chiming in- tired of people dissing lower end cards. I am running BL2 on a R7240 and it is great.

1280x720
all settings max
physX off
AO and DoF off
vsync on
FoV 110

i3, 8GB RAM, M500 SSD,

60fps, lowest 40fps but only occasionally

I needed a low profile card. Started w fanless HD5450, then 6450, then R7 240

Portal and BL2 play awesome- just letting people know there are uses for these cards besides 2d etc.

 

[Piroko]

Just chiming in- tired of people dissing lower end cards. I am running BL2 on a R7 240 and it is great.

1280x720
all settings max
physX off
AO and DoF off
vsync on
FoV 110

i3, 8GB RAM, M500 SSD,

60fps, lowest 40fps but only occasionally

I can understand their points, I run similar settings at similar fps on a HD7770 with one minor difference, I game at 2560x1440. If one does not specifically need a low profile card then there are way better options for very little more money.

 

[tweakboy]

Go with ASUS for mobo. WD or samsung drives. EVGA for nVidia card. gl

 

[rockfella79]

The R7 240 is a terrible card, both in terms of performance and value. You can get something 2-3x as good for not much more, and if you don't need something better you probably don't need a graphics card period. What are the rest of your system specs, and what do you want to use this system for? Also, budget and country?

It is latest gen good HTPC card. I am on a lookout for a fanless single slot version but something like that is yet to come out so might have to settle with 6450 1gb passive.

 

[Ahmed Riyad]

So after reading the whole thread I'm asking for your help in building a new case.

Intel Core i3-2120 processor (searching for i3-3210 but still can't find it)

Gigabyte H61M-S2P

Kingston 4GB DDR3 1600

WD 500GB Blue hard drive

Tiger X6 with 400w PSU

The screen size is 18.5" with resolution 1366x768

My questions are the following:

First is there noticeable difference between i3-2120 & i3-3210 ?

Second : what video card do you advice me to buy in terms of usual gaming (like PES & NFS) & low budget?

Third : Do I need to increase the RAM?

I'm from Egypt, thanks in advance


NB: here is a link of available video cards in Egypt ordered from low price to higher (1 US dollar = 7 Egyptian pounds)

http://www.egprices.com/en/category/computers/vga-cards?cat=1&sub=11&sortby=price_asc

 

[LiviuTl]

Hello Ahmed.

Here: http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/400/Intel_Core_i3_i3-2120_vs_Intel_Core_i3_i3-3210.html

you can see the two processor compared. In terms of computing performance the difference is ZERO. The 3210 has 10 Watts less consumption, it's so and so. The big difference is the intgrated graphics. The 3210 has an HD 2500 which is 19% more powerfull than HD 2000 of 2120. But as you will see I think it doesn't matter for now.

I think NFS is Need for Speed and PES is Pro Evolution Soccer. Below you could see examples of those two games who run on the INTEGRATED graphic card of the 2120 processor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7AYxx6Nqq0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7x7GImKKco
So if you are satisfied of how the games are runing I think you don't need for now a performant dedicated graphic card. In the future you can consider a GTX 650 card or a cheaper GT 640 card.

On the other hand if your budget allow you probably the best configuration is this:

i3-2120 with 2x2 GB DDR3 dual channel kit
Gigabyte H61M-S2P
WD 500GB Blue hard drive
Thermaltake V3 black edition
http://www.egprices.com/en/product/thermaltake-v3-black-edition-mid-tower-450w-psu-maximum-hardware
a 19,5 inch screen if not a 21,5 inch
This for start. The performant graphic card in the future.

I think you don't need to increase the RAM. My son has the same processor on an equivalent MSI motherboard. It's true he has from the begining a GTS 450 dedicated graphic card. We upgraded the memory from 2x2GB at 2X4GB. Nothing significant.

Good luck

 

[Ahmed Riyad]

Firstl of all thank you a lot for your kindness, care & very helpful opinion.

Second, just to summarize what you said:

1- CPU i3 2120 is enough as I will get dedicated graphic card in the future.

2- GTX 650 is a good graphic card, am I right?

I have a couple of questions:

Why do you advice me with 2x2GB RAM instead of 1 RAM of 4GB?

If I will not buy a dedicated graphics card should I buy higher CPU like 4130 as it has higher integrated GPU (Intel HD 4400)?

Again thank you for your patience.

 

[LiviuTl]

You welcome Ahmed.

Let me tell you that I am not a gamer. I am an electrical engineer and computer enthusiast. I learn from my son about games and he learn from me about computers.

1. Yes indeed, for a year max it's enough the 2120.
2. Yes, from what I read GTX 650 it's able to play all existing games and only for a few of them you have to set the resolution only at medium for a flawlessly run.

2x2GB in dual channel gives a 1-3% increase in performance vs 1x4GB DDR3 single channel. But if the price of 2x2GB it's too high the 3% are not justified.

Now the 4130 is a difficult discussion. I did some price research on egprices. I found (4130+motherboard)-(2120+motherboard)=200-220 L.E. Exactly a GT 210 graphic card. Here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html you can see that HD 4400 has roughly the same performance of GT 210.

Going futher (4130+motherboard+2x4GB)-(2120+motherboard+4GB)=490-510 L.E. That means 75% of an GT 640. Here: http://www.hwcompare.com/12889/geforce-gt-210-vs-geforce-gt-640-ddr3/ is GT 640 compared with GT 210 (= Intel HD 4400)

The best answer of your problem is a 3210 processor but unfortunately you said you can not find.
So if you ask me I will go on this configuration:
i3-2120 with 4GB (2x2 GB if the price is good)
Gigabyte H61M-S2P
WD 500GB Blue hard drive
Tiger X6 with 400w PSU
19,5" screen

A GT 640 graphic card in the next half of year.

But it's up to you.

PS GT 640 compared with GTX 650 http://www.hwcompare.com/13461/geforce-gt-640-ddr3-vs-geforce-gtx-650/ And from what I see the GT 640 is max 10% weaker than my son's GTS 450.

Good luck

 

[Ahmed Riyad]

Again & again thank you so much LiviuTi for your care & I hope once a day we become friends as it will be an honor to me & as I said before Im not a regular user of forums so I will send you my Facebook account link & it will be a pleasure if you added me.

I wanna tell you that Im not either a gamer or computer engineer
Im a junior resident at the department of Otorhinolaryngeology of Disuq general hospital & Im building this PC for my little brother (only 8 years old) , so Im trying to make something suitable for gaming that can last 2-3 years with a very restricted budget (2100 LE = 300 $) .


So to summarize the options I have (according to my area prices):

Intel core i3-2120 + Gigabyte H61 = 1100 LE

Intel core i3-3210 (available now) + Gigabyte H61 = 1200 LE

Intel core i3-4130 +Gigabyte H81 = 1450 LE (350 LE more than first option)


If we fixed the price of the 4GB ram + the case at 550 LE we will have three budgets:

1650 LE , 1750 LE , 2000 LE

The GT640 = 700 LE
The GTX650 2GB = 1000 LE
The GTX650 4GB = 1150 LE

This is s couple of video clips for gaming on Intel HD 4400 just in case you wanted to see its performance :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysDgUdQLvUk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPHge50dSWg

Now it's your budget , your pc & your plan.

NB: You may also would like to read this article:

http://wccftech.com/intel-hd-graphi...ance-compared-hd-5200-gt3e-par-gt640-hd-6670/

 

[monstercameron]

to all who have suggested that the r7-240 wouldn't be much faster than the intel hd2500, you are doing the OP a disservice. It is much better and you would see a decent performance increase.

The question is what are the choices available, the budget and the use-case?

 

[LiviuTl]

Ok Ahmed. I will be honored to have a junior medicine doctor as friend.

Now about computers. I saw on YouTube Battlefield 3 played on HD 4400 as well on HD 2500. I am hardly believing that Battlefield 3 run as nice on those integrated graphic cards. They say minimum for Battlefield 3 is a Nvidia 8800 GTS card. Intel HD 2500 is really close to Nvidia GT 210 and Intel HD 4400 is really close to ATI HD 5450. Both of them ar half the power of 8800 GTS.

I am thinking that at the age of 8 your brother maybe is not playing shooting games. Of course not only shooting games are demanding hardware resoursces but your brother could start with some easy games. I have big discussions with my almost 13 years son about shooting games.

On the other hand, my son's computer has already 3,5 years and is running like in the first day. The only thing that broke was the PSU, but a PSU of 400W could keep a GTS 450 Graphic card (who drains 115 Watts in full load) with difficulty. So perhaps you (and your brother) can think to keep this computer for at least 4 years if not 5.

If you intend to keep the computer only for 2 years I think it's ok to go with the i3-4130. If you want to keep the computer for 5 years go with the i3-3120 and a good graphic card after 1 year. Between 2 and 5 years I don't know what to say.

About graphic cards. A 4GB GTX 650 it's a waste of money. The 128-bit interface it's too narrow to use all the 4GB. At least 2GB of 4 are there for nothing. A 1GB GTX 650 worth the money, a 2GB maybe worth, but a 4GB GTX 650 no.

Hope this help you.

 

[Ahmed Riyad]

So after brain storming , getting new money resources & with your precious help I decided to have this :

Gigabyte H61 ... 400 LE
Kingston ram 4gb ... 300 LE
GT640 VGA ... 700 LE

But for the last time - I promise - I have few questions :

1- i3-2120 or i3-3210 ? why ?
(both are available , but the Ivybridge is more expensive)
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i3-3210-vs-Intel-Core-i3-2120

2- The H61 support RAM with maximum pass 1333 & I read that if I installed on it a RAM with 1600 pass this may cause conflict, is this right?

3- The video card should be Gigabyte Geforce GT640 , MSI Geforce GT640 or Zotac GT640 ?? what is the difference?

4- Kingston valueram or hyperx ?? noticeable difference?

Im asking a lot of questions because a lot of parts from what I mentioned are not available in my area & will need to travel to buy them so excuse me & thank you.

 

[LiviuTl]

Hello Ahmed.

1. So if you decided to go with the GT 640 VGA from start, take the i3-2120 because is cheaper and the difference between the HD 2000 and HD 2500 doesn't matter, GT 640 is 400% more powerful then HD 2500.

2. I don't have personal experience running 1600 DDR3 on 1333 MHz motherboard but on forums people said that there are no problems of restarting and serious conflict. Specialists said that this situation causes some errors but this errors does not restart the computer and just lower a little the RAM speed. So according to the specialists if you put 1600 DDR3 on 1333 MHz motherboard the memory will work for real at 1300-1250 MHz. Not very important.

3. About the graphic card you will have to look when you buy at the technical data. Buy the card which has the biggest core clock. Again 1GB of memory on videocard is enough, the 2GB version is 1% more powerfull and in a lot of situation the 2GB doesn't worth the money.

Speaking of graphic cards if you find an ATI (AMD) HD 7750 cheaper or equal with GT 640 than buy the ATI. It's a little faster.

4. HyperX are good for overclocking. At the same pass the difference between Valueram and HyperX is less than 1%

You welcome and have a nice trip.

 

[tweakboy]

ASUS is a better company then Sapphire.. end of story

 

[Ahmed Riyad]

I watched these two videos & got confused :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSQYDY4L4CQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3JzSeAk14s

So I looked again for cards at the same price group & found this :
http://www.egprices.com/en/category/computers/vga-cards/?&min=700&max=750&sortby=date_desc&page=2

what do you think ???

 

[EliteRetard]

I watched these two videos & got confused :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSQYDY4L4CQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3JzSeAk14s

So I looked again for cards at the same price group & found this :
http://www.egprices.com/en/category/computers/vga-cards/?&min=700&max=750&sortby=date_desc&page=2

what do you think ???

If you can, avoid DDR3/GDDR3

Looks like the best option in that list would then be the Sapphire R7 250 1GB GDDR5 for 725 LE.

It can be as much as 50% faster than a GDDR3 GT 640.

 

[LiviuTl]

Hello Ahmed.

You are confused that they said GT 640 is a bad graphic card? Indeed it's Gt 640 not GTX 650. Elite is right, R7 250 is better but it's draining more power, sometimes more than 75 Watts. I don't know what PSU do you have. I know it's 400 W but who knows the PSU efficiency?

I used this: http://support.asus.com/powersupply.aspx and with GT 640 which drains 64 Watts gives a 350W PSU. It's very difficult to say if your PSU it's at limit with R7 250 or not and he have some marginal reserve. I hope it will be ok.

Greetings

PS Bellow there are 2 links.
First where they compare R7 240, R7 250, GT 640 and GT 630
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r7-240-and-250,3717.html#xtor=RSS-182
Second it's a complete study of GT 640
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Zotac/GeForce_GT_640/
Now you know almost everything I know about graphic cards. If you ask me I will buy the R7 250 with a 450W PSU. But it's very possible that the R7 250 work good with a 400W PSU.

 

[Ahmed Riyad]

So after thinking Im going to buy my PC today with the following plan:

Mobo H61-S2P .. 400 LE
Pentium Dual core g2030 .. 400 LE
Ram Kingston 4Gb 1600 .. 300 LE
Case with 400W PSU .. 200-300 LE

Total = 1300 - 1400 LE

I managed to provide 1000 LE for the graphics card so I need you to choose for me from this list :
http://www.egprices.com/en/category/computers/vga-cards/?&min=950&max=1050&page=2

I don't know which one to choose between these two cards:
GTX 650 OC 2GB GDDR5

OR

GTX 750 1GB GDDR5

Also check this review:
http://www.legitreviews.com/evga-geforce-gtx-750-1gb-sc-video-card-review_137067

 

[LiviuTl]

Hello Ahmed.

The last link in your post it is somehow useless. It is mostly about GTX 650 Ti vs GTX 750 Ti. The "Ti" comes from Titan which are better (major better) versions of the basics cards from the respective class. So GTX 650 is one thing GTX 650 Ti is other thing. Same with GTX 750 and GTX 750 Ti.

And to complicate even more things the OC comes from "overclock" which are better (slightly better) versions of the basics cards from the respective class. For example a Gigabyte GTX 650 OC is slightly better than Gigabyte GTX 650.

Here you have a small review about Gigabyte GTX 650 OC 2GB
http://www.game-debate.com/hardware/?gid=1425&graphics=GeForce%20GTX%20650%20Gigabyte%20OC%202GB%20Edition
and here a very extended test of GTX 650 1GB
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_650_Power_Edition/25.html

Now in theory GTX 650 is slightly better than GTX 750
http://www.hwcompare.com/17115/geforce-gtx-650-vs-geforce-gtx-750/ and I think that in games they are the same. And because the 650 is cheaper, I prefer to go with the Gigabyte GTX 650 OC 2GB which is 965 L.E on egprice.

In addition I can say not to think at Titan versions. They need more power so 400W PSU is not enough, beside that in some games the Titan versions will be "bottleneck" by the G2030 processor.

And some other things about the screen. Try to buy a screen with a good response time (5ms) who has DVI input. And also buy a dual-link DVI to DVI cable to connect the screen with the GTX card.

Later edit: I have found here on romanian forums some problems with the Gigabyte Mobo. In short two problelms:
1. the G2030 processor is not supported on the v1.0 of this Mobo and only on versions v2.0, v2,1 and v2.2.
2. Some incompatibilities when install a dedicated graphic card.

Later Later edit: Oh sorry the bad reviews are for H61M-S2PV but anyway take care with the Mobo.

Kind regards

 

[Ahmed Riyad]

Finally yesterday I bought the Mobo , the CPU & the RAM according to the plan I mentioned before & they are all working great

I will travel to Alexandria next Saturday to buy the GTX 750

But I'm worried about a small issue of compatibility

I read this in the user manual of the mobo

Should I worry about this?

I also took an image for the mobo itself

It's written on it PCI express 2 !!!!

 

[LiviuTl]

No problem Ahmed.

Some problems (max 10% chances) appear at installation of a PCI-E 3.0 (or 2.1 or 2.0) card in a PCI-E 1.0 slot. But in your case a card PCI-E 3.0 will work fine in a PCI-E 2.0 slot. The chances for an incompatibility are less than 0.1%

 

[Ahmed Riyad]

Thank you so much for your precious help & waiting for your friend request on Facebook

 

[LiviuTl]

My pleasure Ahmed. About Facebook. I can not find a button with "Send friend request"on my FB page. But I have send you a message on Facebook. It arrived in your folder named "Others" Also I have send you a personal message here with the link of my FB page maybe you will find a button with "Send friend request" on your FB page

I don't know why I can not send you a friend request.