HIS Radeon R7 250 iCooler 1GB Graphics Card Review
Conclusion
As with much of the new Radeon R9 and R7 range with the R7 250 HIS And AMD are re-using an existing GPU, in this case Oland which is the same base for the likes of AMDs 8500 and 8700 mobile GPUs.
The HIS version of the card sticks with what is important, keeping the small PCB and attaching a quiet cooler to it. Performance is also good, in fact surprisingly so. When we began testing the R7 250 iCooler it seemed like 1920×1080 with any sort of detail would be a stretch but as we went on it was clear that this little card was a very capable gamer. Not only did we get to game on medium/high detail a lot there was also a noticeable increase in performance over the similarly priced GT 640.
Also worthy of note is that R7 250 supports AMD Mantle.
Simply put, Mantle is AMD’s approach to providing the ideal platform for game developers to expose the features/performance of the AMD cards in their games. It is an approach similar to that found in consoles where developers can draw better performance out of the hardware than the PC equivalent… there is no need for the DirectX/OpenGL layer/overhead in the process. It’s GPU>Mantle API/Driver>Game. Using Battlefield 4 as an example there will be a patch released later this year which moves AMD users from the DirectX build to a Mantle build and gives Dice the opportunity to expose more graphics features and performance. Something which has the potential to give the card a real advantage at its price point.
Speaking of price point the iCooler R7 250 will retail for around $89 or £69 which makes it a perfect card for anyone looking to game on a budget.
| Where to buy… | |
| Overclockers.co.uk – £67.99 | |
| NewEgg.com – $119.99 (Price will drop) |
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