Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unboxed today we're grabbing a bunch of second-hand graphics cards and pairing them with the core i3 8100 to see how they compare to the new Raven Ridge ap use and as always we won't be just focusing on performance but also value during a time of extreme graphics card prices the Rison 320 200 G and Verizon 520 400 G off the game is a very affordable means of building a basic gaming PC in terms of value the 2200 G has appeared unbeatable in all of our tests so far but what if you pick up a secondhand graphics card at a great price would that be a better option well today I plan to find out but before we get into it today's video has been sponsored by Alliance heroes of the spire and this is a must-have mobile game through you RPG fans with over 10,000 combinations and 400 unique heroes Alliance offers ultimate freedom of choice like no other not only that but all the different modes will keep you engaged and entertained there's a real-time PvP mode giant bosses to contend with and of course massive guild and nation battles Alliance is also free to play and if that wasn't sweet enough download Alliance by the link in the video description and get a bonus 50,000 gold and 50 gems right away so go check it out and thank you to Alliance for sponsoring this video so for this comparison we have eight games on the menu and six secondhand graphics cards covering a range of prices for the most part all of the discrete graphics cards have been tested with the core i3 8100 using 16 gigabytes of ddr4 2,400 memory then for comparison the Raven Ridge ApS have been tested using their Vega r8 and vaguer 11 integrated graphics and they've been paired with 16 gigabytes of ddr4 3,200 memory for the most part I'm not focusing on overclocking performance but we will touch on that briefly towards the end of the video along with a quick look at discrete GPU performance with the 2400 G testings being conducted at 30 P and 720p and yes budget gamers do often play at this low resolution and believe it or not you can still have a whole heap of fun you'll also have to compromise on image quality settings as well so I've tested using appropriate quality settings so keeping all that in mind let's jump into the benchmarks starting with the 720p results we see at the 2400 years only able to roughly match the GT 1030 which is a current generation entry-level GPU it's interesting to see that the now eight year old flagship GeForce GTX 580 was 13% fast in the 2400 G of course that gull is about 20 times more power so keep that in mind the gtx 750ti is a standout here offering 23 percent more frames on average and that's a pretty decent performance uplift right there that said the r7 370 runs away even further offering over 40% more frames while the GTX 760 and HD 7950 were faster again before you get too disappointed though be aware these older graphics cards aren't cheap and we'll discuss that more towards the end of the video then jumping at 1080 P this really hurts the AP use in star wars battlefront - even with the low quality settings the games just two memory intensive and the lack of dedicated video RAM really is a problem here as a result the ultra entry-level GPU such as the GT 1030 and rx 550 start to pull ahead well ahead in the case of high rx 550 meanwhile the gtx 750ti was 35% faster on average and 46 percent faster when comparing the 1% low data moving on we have csgo and this title is as much a cpu test as it is a GPU test especially at 720p I suspect those 1% lower results are a limitation of the rise in CPU or the games ability to properly utilize horizon but we won't get into that I think it's more of a CPU limitation than it is a Vega GPU limitation in fact we do see clear evidence of this we're moving into tiny P here the Vega 11 GPU and so the 2400 G is now able to match the GT 1030 for csgo players seeking big frame rates you'll ideally want an Intel quad core but it has to be said value for money the 2200 g and 2400 g do do very well here providing a smooth playable experience still the core i3 8100 with the old gtx 660ti does allow for over 70% more frames on average next up we have dota 2 and the Raven Ridge abs are much more competitive here particularly at 720p that said the core i3 8100 with the G check 752 I was almost 50% faster when comparing the 1% low data and 65% for the average framerate the margins remain much the same at 1080p and while the experience was still very good with the AEP use it was noticeably smooth than with the core i3 8100 and gtx 750ti combo for example the r7 370 also allowed for a minimum of 60 FPS at all times in our test fortnight battle royale plays very well on the Raven Ridge ap use at 720p you can't really complain with the 2400 G though the fact that the r7 370 and gtx 750ti are over 40 percent faster means that you will be able to crank up the visual quality settings and still maintain over 60 FPS at all times moving on to turn EP shows how limited the AP use can be in terms of performance and while the 2400 g did manage to roughly match the rx 550 and GT 1030 it was world's slower than the gtx 750ti on r7 370 those particular discreet graphics cards offered 60% more performance which is obviously very significant like csgo overwatch is another title that's primarily CPU bound at 720p however unlike csgo overwatch does do a good job of utilizing the rise than CPUs as a result the 2200 g and 2400 G looks very solid and this time are comparable to not only the rx 550 and GT 1030 but also the HD 7950 and r7 370 has to be said though that these AMD GPUs do appear to be running into some kind of bottleneck that isn't faced by the GeForce competition removing at 1080p sees the r7 370 HD 7950 pull away though they still trail the GeForce GPUs by a reasonable margin the gtx 750ti for example is faster than the HD 7950 and 41% faster than the 20 or 400 g so while still very playable on the AP use at 1080p you can get a much better experience with a previous generation budget discrete graphics card moving on now one of the worst experiences had when testing the Raven Ridge ApS for the first time was seen in pub key the game was playable at 720p though the 2200 G did suffer from stuttering issues at times that said though in this so we can see the graphics cards such as the gtx 750ti we're only 19 percent faster than the 2400 g you really need an r7 370 or a gtx 660ti to push past 60 FPS at all times using these low quality settings in fact despite using the low quality preset pomp G is difficult to run at 1080p and I don't recommend either apu for this task based on the data he'll ideally want a gtx 760 or HD 7950 for a smooth experience the second last game tested is Rainbow six siege and here the AP use were very competitive interesting with the GTX 580 tanked at 720p though this is likely down to a driver issue meanwhile the 2500 G wasn't a great deal slower than the gtx 750ti the AP users remain competitive at turning opinion the 2400 g was able to live with gtx 750ti light performance that said upgrading to the gtx 660ti r7 370 or even the GTX 760 will net you between 40 to 50 percent extra performance finally we have rocket League and although the AP who's managed to maintain over 60 FPS throughout our tests they were significantly slower than almost all the discrete graphics cards tested on the core i3 8100 this was again the case at 1080p here the gtx 750ti was a whopping 81 percent faster than 2400 g while the gtx 760 wasn't that far off being three times faster so while playable in rocket league this wasn't a great result for the AMD apus in terms of cost per frame of course you can overclock these EPS for higher frame rates but for best results you will want to spend an additional 10 to 20 dollars on a tower style air cooler for a quick look at this I overclocked the GPU in both models to 1.6 gigahertz and the CPU cores to 3.9 gigahertz and checked out the performance in Rainbow six siege here we see that overclocking the 22 energy boost performance by about 20% and this is enough to place it on party stock 2400 G meanwhile we could only improve the 2400 GS performance by about 8% though in this test that was enough to place it ahead of the gtx 750ti and rx 550 of course while you can't overclock the core i3 8100 you can overclock all of these graphics cards to receive at least 10% performance so it's somewhat of a point finally I just wanted to take a quick look at how the Radeon HD 7950 performs on the rise and 520 400 G compared to the core i3 8100 I will look at this in much more detail in a future video but for now this should give us some idea of what to expect here we see in Rainbow six siege at 1080p using the low quality preset the core i3 8100 is 17% fast and the 2400 G when comparing the 1% low data that's a pretty significant advantage and while we might not see this in all titles it means for gaming with a discrete graphics card the coffee-like CPUs can at times enable much greater performance despite using much slower ddr4 memory okay so that didn't look particularly good to be honest it has to be said though that virtually all of the discrete graphics cards feature in this comparison are very good well most gamers might scoff at a gtx 750ti in 2018 but it does still pack 640 cuda cores in a 148 millimeter squared eye and with 2 gigabytes of dedicated gddr5 memory on a 192 bit wide bus and enjoys a bandwidth of 88 gigabytes per second my point is no integrated GPU that existed ever has been able to hold a candle to something like that and well you could argue that neither can the Raven Ridge AP use they do do significantly better than anything that's come before them and here's a quick look at the eight game break down using the 1080p data across the eight games tested the gtx 750ti was on average 38 percent faster than the 2400 g and 60 percent fast and the 2200 g so that's a bit brutal to be honest it also gets quite a bit worse when you look at the r7 370 gtx 660ti and so on so we know the 2200 G with its CPU and GPU combo cost just $100 u.s. and the 2400 G 170 dollars u.s. but how much do these older graphics cards cost on the second-hand market well this is a bit of a difficult question to address because pricing in the used market varies quite a bit as is the case with new graphics cards pricing from just a few months ago is completely irrelevant today for example you managed to get a gtx 750ti for $30 three months ago and while that's a great price getting one for that price today though might not be possible especially depending on where you're situated in the world but in any case it's still going to be mighty difficult hopping over to ebay.com and pulling up all the completed listings so far this month we see that the average selling price for gtx 750ti was $68 u.s. that then is about what you could expect to pay for one of course you might get lucky and get one for $40 or you might get unlucky not do your research and get rolled for say $90 you might also of course get rolled paying just $40 the card could rock up and be dead on arrival and then you have to deal with all that and that's just the fun of second-hand shopping anyway all that aside I've got to worked out the average selling price for all they used graphics cards featured in this video and done a cost per frame analysis this then is what we're looking at and it places the AP use in rather poor light however we are missing a key ingredient the CPU while the 2200 G with its rise in CPU cores and vaguer eight GPU costs just $100 u.s. the r7 370 or the gtx 750ti or any other of discreet graphics card featured in this video aren't much good without a CPU for testing I used the core i3 8100 and that costs 115 dollars u.s. so that value really needs to be added to the GPU cost so adding in the core i3 8100 price let's see how the graph looks now okay so that looks much better for the APU so the 2200 G in particular is very competitive but you'll have no doubt noticed that it's still not the best value option the core i3 8100 paired with the gtx 760 was about 10% better in terms of value despite costing twice as much the GTX 580 is also slightly better as well though that particular graphics card does consume copious amounts of power making it a very hot item basically though what this is showing us is that in terms of value the 2200 G is excellent especially when compared to brand-new hardware the 2400 G is still a decent option but for budget shoppers it's far less attractive and it's not terribly difficult to get a better deal shopping secondhand and all this pretty much falls in line with what I said in our day 1 Raven Ridge coverage that said though this still isn't the full story both the core i3 8100 and Raven Ridge ApS will require a new motherboard and ddr4 memory if you already have a be 350 motherboard you probably are upgrading to an EP you so that scenario doesn't really make sense chances are if you're getting an APU you do need to buy a new motherboard so if we factor in the motherboard and memory prices things do change quite a bit this next graph adds $70 to all the configurations for a B 350 or a B 360 motherboard I expect those will be out quite soon and then $85 for 8 gigabytes of ddr4 2400 memory and that is for the core i3 configurations which there's all the discrete graphics cards and then 105 dollars for ddr4 3200 memory for the AP use the turtle platform cost of each configuration is listed in the following graph and like that the AP you look a lot less attractive once you factor in the entire platform cost they're actually considerably poorer value when compared to the core i3 8100 with a secondhand GPU as I noted my day 1 review they are better value than the core i3 with a new graphics card but the second-hand stuff gives this combo the edge it's also interesting to note that while the 22 energy was 32% cheaper than the 2400 G when comparing just the price of the AP use the 20/20 is just 8% cheaper when comparing the entire platform cost okay so how useful these new AMD AP use really are depends on your needs and how you go about upgrading or building your new system if you're building a brand new PC from the ground up and you're confident you can get a decent graphics card on the second-hand market then you're probably best off with the core i3 8100 for example the core i3 8100 and geforce gtx 760 for example might cost twice as much as the 2200 g but once you factor in the price of the motherboard and the memory modules that $100 difference over the 22 energy becomes a lot less significant in fact that combo cost just 30% more now once you factor in those additional components then if you will also factor in the cost of a case power supply and all the others stuff then the margin just continues to shrink and it becomes very insignificant at that point so at this point you might be wondering why I recommend AMD APU at all well compared to other new harbour options they are actually very cost effective not everyone can all wants to buy a secondhand hardware and there are obvious pitfalls to doing so for those content with a low end gaming solution but would like a platform they can build upon for years to come the 2200 G is a unique choice get yourself a decent be 350 motherboards some ddr4 memory and in a year or two you could be rocking an affordable 8 course 16 thread CPU the 2400 G isn't quite as attractive but with 4 cores and 8 threads it is a very solid gaming choice and it will be for years to come and it offers excellent frame time performance and drop in a mid-range or high-end graphics card down the track and you're good to go of course it all gets more complicated when you introduce other CPUs for example you can purchase the Pentium G 45 60 with a H 110 motherboard plus a secondhand geforce gtx 760 graphics card for about the same price as the 2200 g combo and in most games it will be a lot faster for non-gaming tasks though the 2200 G is a much more powerful CPU and for the G 4562 really makes sense you have to rely on getting a good secondhand graphics card for the right price with almost limitless options I'm going to end this video here before I continue to just go on and on if you enjoyed the video be sure to hit the like button subscribe for more content if you appreciate the testing we do have our unboxed and consider supporting us on patreon thanks for watching I'm your host Steve see you next time you