Wired2Fire Diablo Value Select review

The Diablo Value Select is equipped with a 2GB AMD Radeon R7 250 graphics card, which is a cut above the i3 processor’s on-chip graphics. When running Dirt Showdown at a resolution of 1,280×720 at High quality with 4x anti-aliasing, the card achieved a slick average frame rate of 54.7fps. The graphics card couldn’t quite match up to the demands of our 1,920×1,080 Ultra quality test, in which it scored 23.6fps, but dropping the quality to High produced a playable frame rate of 38.2fps. The one disadvantage of this processor and graphics card combination is that you can’t combine them to produce higher frame rates, as on AMD processor-equipped PCs such as the Eclipse Galaxy A10 R7-250.

The supplied 1,920×1,080 monitor is the ever-reliable AOC e2250Swda, a matt display that has a remarkably good panel for an inexpensive screen, with a measured contrast ratio of 854:1 and colour coverage of 89.3% of the sRGB colour gamut. It has DVI and VGA ports and, although the panel doesn’t have much screen tilt, it’s one of our favourite budget displays. The mouse and keyboard are an ultra-low-cost Octigen set. The mouse feels unusually light and the keyboard is spongy, but both are reasonably comfortable to use and will do until you replace them with better models.

The Diablo Value Select performs well and, despite only having a dual-core Intel Core i3-4130 processor, did just as well as many of its quad-core AMD Kaveri-based rivals in our application benchmarks. The processor is likely to perform worse in tasks that take advantage of more than two cores, such as virtualisation, but this won’t be a problem for most people. However, the PC doesn’t have much upgrade potential, making the Diablo Value Select a good PC, but not a great bargain. We prefer the Palicomp AMD Kaveri Evolution.