A full-height board and a half-height adapter are on sale now

Dec 13, 2013 12:37 GMT  ·  By

AMD's Radeon R7 200 series of graphics cards isn't nearly as powerful as the Radeon R9 200 line, but it's still fast enough to need active cooling, usually. XFX decided to overcome this limitation though.

Thus, it has made sure that the first two boards in the Radeon R7 200 collection both manage to exist without passive cooling.

Said boards are the Radeon R7 250 Core Edition and the R7 240 Core Edition. The former is a full-height adapter, which means that the PCB isn't any smaller than that of other boards, except in length.

Thus, it's not perfect for some HTPCs (home-theater personal computers) or mini PCs, which can only fit low-profile cards.

Unfortunate really, because the product does otherwise possess both main hallmarks of a good multimedia PC video board: totally silent operation (no fans are used after all) and a low price of just $92 / €92.

For those who want to know the rest of the specs, the board runs the Oland 28nm GPU (graphics processing unit) at 1050 MHz and the 1 GB of GDDR5 VRAM at 4.6 GHz over an interface of 128 bits. Finally, it possesses VGA, DVI and HDMI outputs.

The other video card, Radeon R7 240 Core Edition, does have a low-profile cooler, and is even cheaper than the R7 250 Core Edition at €75 / $75.

However, it is, obviously, weaker than its sibling, with a GPU clock of 780 MHz and 2 GB of DDR3 memory at 1.8 GHz (again, 128-bit interface).

You'll notice that the heatsink is much smaller here, in line with the smaller PCB. It's made possible by the memory chips, which are weaker and, thus, less hot than those on the R7 250 board.

XFX is already shipping these products, or should. Check local retailers or online stores to see if they are listed or not.

Photo Gallery (4 Images)

XFX Radeon R7 250 Core Edition
XFX Radeon R7 250 Core EditionXFX Radeon R7 240 Core Edition
+1more