November 2014 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews 45 Build: Features: Performance: Value: GRAPHICS CARD
XFX Radeon R7 240
System requirements AMD Radeon R7 240; 2GB GDDR3; 750MHz clock (780MHz Boost); 400MHz memory clock (1.6GHz DDR effective); 128-bit memory interface; 20 texture units; PCIe interface; DirectX 11.2; 1x D-Sub; 1x DVI, 1x HDMI; no power connectors needed; 2-year warranty£46
inc VATContact
n xfxforce.com/en-gb
Read more
n tinyurl.com/Lpychjb
We’ve seen some rather impressive pixel-punchers from AMD over the past few months. The new AMD Radeon R7 240 graphics card, though, is about as lowly as it gets – and consequently costs just £46. On the face of it, such a price tag isn’t a great expense. But most of the potential customers of this product will be looking to replace their onboard graphics – which, likely, added next to nothing to the price of the system. Given that it’s a choice of spending nothing, or lavishing £46 on a card like this one, the decision over whether to buy suddenly looks more of a dilemma.
So who is such a product aimed at? Onboard graphics solutions are now sufficiently impressive that you can find good video reproduction without feeling the need to upgrade. Where integrated graphics solutions fall down is gaming, though.
This AMD Radeon card won’t put you in a position to destroy wave after wave of enemies in a top resolution; but it will, as we’re going to see, add a significant burst to sluggish onboard frame rates.
But first, let’s get the big disappointment out of the way. Despite being a new product (at least in theory – these cards have effectively been floating around in OEM form for over a year now), the 240 doesn’t get the benefit of the new features appearing on some of AMD’s latest launches.
The significant omission is TrueAudio. That’s a shame, as this feature would better surround sound with some games, and would be an obvious selling point for those looking to add spice to their system. However, you’ll get support for Mantle, should AMD’s proprietary new graphics API take off, and DirectX 11.2 support is good.
system. Unsurprisingly given the less than stellar specification, the card is quiet, even under load.
We mention the HD 7770 because, while it’s £20 more expensive, it is a superior card; and the R7 250 is around £15 to £20 more expensive. Again, there’s a marked difference in performance. If £46 is your absolute budget, then clearly those cards will be out of bounds. However, it will be worth the extra if you can find it.
Even at medium and low levels of quality, the R7 240 struggled to get much above 40fps in our tests. Its 43.2- and 37fps in Stalker: Call of Pripyat (at 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 respectively) are playable rates, but struggle to compete with 87- and 75.8fps on the HD 7770; or 68.1- and 63.4fps on the R7 250.
Again on BattleForge, the 240 averaged figures of 42.6- and 39.9fps at those resolutions, while the 7770 managed a much more emphatic 87- and 75.8fps, and the R7 250 60.3- and 56.6fps.
Bioshock would hardly be playable on the 240 at normal settings, so we dropped it to low- quality settings. Here, the 240 managed respectable figures of 46.3- and 34fps, but that’s against the 7770’s 90.1- and 77.6fps.
Verdict
It’s hard to recommend the 240. It’s a respectable step up from onboard graphics. But you can get significantly improved firepower if you shop around. J Robin Morris This
XFX version comes with 2GB of GDDR3 RAM. There’s also a 1GB
version, costing £5 less. Sapphire offers its version with 4GB, which takes the card to the £66 mark. Frankly, though, we can’t imagine many users needing to push the 240 beyond 2GB, so the 4GB version seems like overkill.
The core-clock speed goes up to 750MHz on this overclocked card. That’s actually 20MHz more than the standard-issue R7 240, although all these cards already have a Boost mode that maxes out at 780MHz.
The XFX is slightly behind other examples on memory-clock speeds, and its figure of 400MHz (1600MHz DDR effective) is a notch down on the 450MHz (1800MHz) offered by some of the competition.
The 128-bit memory interface is fairly paltry, and doesn’t permit the 240 to stretch its pins fully. Combined with the low 1600MHz clock, the result is a memory bandwidth of 25.6GB/s. The older HD 7770 (tinyurl.com/m6dharb) is similarly hamstrung by its 128- bit interface, although stronger clock speeds do drive it to a better bandwidth figure of 72GB/s. The 240’s 320 stream processors also struggle against the competition.
It’s a diminutive little card, and there’s a low-profile version available for more confined cases – the latter card suffers from a hideous cooling
Stalker: Call of Pripyat (fps)
143.2/37
BattleForge (fps)
142.6/39.9
Bioshock (fps)
142.6/39.9
11680x1050/1920x1200
Build: Features: Performance: Value:
System requirements 1.6GHz Intel Atom CE5335 (dual-core SoC with Hyper Threading); 1GB DDR3 RAM; 4x tool-less drive bays; accepts 3.5in and 2.5in SATA Revision 2 disks; 2x USB 2.0, 2x USB 3.0; gigabit ethernet; Hardware Transcoding Engine; RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10 SHR; external disk support – EXT3, NTFS, HFS+; 165x203x233mm; 2.03kg
£390
inc VAT Contact n synology.com/en-uk Read more n tinyurl.com/LtdzoejThe DS415play has been designed to fill a gap in Synology’s line-up, and caters for home users. It has some useful specifications, starting with an Intel Atom dual-core CPU running at 1.6GHz and backed up by 1GB of DDR3 memory.
The drive includes a hardware transcoding engine for 1080p video for streaming video to your TV or mobile device. However, it’s worth pointing out that despite the media focus of this device it’s a streaming device only as there is no HDMI port for direct connection to a TV, as you find on more expensive units such as the QNAP TS-469L or Thecus N4560. However, a great addition for Mac users is native support for external HFS+ formatted drives.
The unit itself is a discrete affair in brushed black plastic with a shiny black front panel. The front doesn’t have a hinge like some models, but is held on by rubber-gripped pegs and can be easily pulled off. Inside there are tool-less drive bays, which are a boon for those intimidated by screwdrivers – you unclip the bay put your drive in and slide the bay into the unit. The disks are hot swappable, so can be removed with the unit still powered on.
As with all Synology DSM-based units, setting up and using is a pleasure. This is one area Synology plays its trump card, the software interface. The DSM 5.0 operating system has an attractive and intuitive interface.
The iOS and Android apps add more
control. A DS Video app allows you to watch videos, DS Download lets you download files and torrents, while DS Photo is handy for backing up photos from your mobile. These apps also allow you to access your NAS drive when you’re out and about thanks to Synology’s free DDNS service. This means you don’t have to worry about your ISP randomly assigning your home connection a new IP address.
Performance
To test this unit, we installed two Seagate 4TB Enterprise Capacity and two 3TB Enterprise Value disks. We used CrystalDiskMark (CDM), ATTO and file copy on Windows 7; and QuickBench and Blackmagic Disk Speed Test on OS X Mavericks (SMB share). All tests were run over gigabit ethernet, using an Apple Time Capsule as router.
The CrystalDiskMark scores showed 86MB/s read and 83MB/s write speeds on sequential transfers, and 36MB/s read and 86MB/s write on 512kB transfers. These are respectable for this benchmark and far higher than the Synology DS413j (tinyurl. com/pL8xm8s) we tested in 2013.
ATTO showed even higher numbers at transfer sizes over 512kB (up to 8191kB) performance varied between 102- to 111MB/s read and 80- to 91MB/s write.
To get some real-world figures, we also copied a 3.47GB video file from and then back to the DS415play, and timed the copy. The copy from this drive to a laptop (which contained a Samsung EVO 750GB SSD) took 35.6 seconds, which equates to a read speed of 100MB/s. The copy from the laptop to the NAS was completed in 48.7 seconds, suggesting an average speed of 73MB/s write.
For those who are concerned with 4kB file size performance, under CDM the DS415play achieved 0.838MB/s read and 5.19MB/s write. These 4kB numbers are about what you could expect from a HDD-based RAID solution.
On OS X, we used the QuickBench extended test which consists of transfers from 20- to 100MB; and here the NAS averaged 104MB/s read and 88MB/s write, which are good scores. Finally we ran Blackmagic which returned average write speeds of 83MB/s and reads of 93MB/s.
Verdict
When you combine the performance, price and OS, the DS415play could be a crowd-pleaser for the multimedia NAS market. J John Taylor
NAS DRIVE
Synology DS415play
46 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews November 2014
November 2014 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews 47 Build: Features: Performance: Value: BLUETOOTH SPEAKER