Wow... It's not about gaming please! Is it a case of working on "ignorance of the un-informed consumer" somewhat? But step back from our gaming is only it… or it for Photoshop foxholes and look at the market.
There's a ton of OEM home-use Desktops that came with Intel HD2000 Clarkdale, Lynnfield, Sandy Bridge, GeForce 6150/7025 and 760G 880G, all such IGP’s are the stuff folks are considering they might benefit from a cheap up-grade (but at $95 this isn't cheap). They may not really need this much, it but there’s things an upgrade can ameliorate; accelerated video, an HDMI or DVI-D connector to run a new 24” monitor, or want to run dual displays. Sure they can use VGA on that new monitor but what the heck. Then there's getting off using regular (shared) system memory. Let’s say they’ve two slots filled with (if lucky) 4Gb; upgrade that to 8Gb... 16Gb? That’s the last place to put good money for those systems especially if DDR2. Sure it’s not going to help a lot, or be noticed in the seat of the pants, but I’d rather start with a discrete graphic’s. Now another big reason; lots of folk don’t want to jump on Win8 OS. They’re not comfortable and see the whole "Active Tiles" as not an easy transition. Sure they could classic shell, but those sitting at Staples, Costco, etc; they more than likely don’t know that as of yet. Willing to add a little life to their current machine makes them feel they’ve stretched that box another year or so.
I’m one for appreciating this the upgrade side of business, and how it benefits the industry and assists our side of it (components) to thrive. Do you want component manufactures not offering such bread and butter parts in the aftermarket, while OEM's that do offer them ask $150? Face it the enthusiast parts while beholding to OEM won’t fill the coffers enough to drive R&D! While they wouldn’t be releasing them if there wasn’t a market and profit. As folk hold on to something a little longer OEM builders need to lure folk with lower prices, and/or more tech for the buck. It’s good for the environment less folks dumping machines into the waste stream. I drop such of a Goodwill on the weekend and it one of a few place that take E-Waste and they had 5 big carts 3 with monitor and two with chassis. I ask how long those have been collecting he said that was about a week and he had more inside. If we don’t understand/accept such philosophies we only damn ourselves.
The issue I see that needs to be brought up with this is its TDP, with DDR3 is it lower that a DDR5? Normally 7750 are 55W, if this is OC where does it stand when many older IGP box's had 300W PSU’s. Gigabyte and AMD place a senseless PSU recommendation of 400W, and while most Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acers might provide the overhead to run this folk shy away because they see it an inflexible minimum not the "suggestion" it is. Always check with a PSU Calculator if 20-25% below the PSU rating you usually good. That said, if you’re on a 3-4 year old machine, a new solid PSU something like the Antec EarthWatts Green EA-380D Green or Corsair CX430 are smart considerations for their being 80 PLUS Bronze Certified and Active PFC.
The real problem is with an MSRP of $95... that's not waving any "cost-effective" banner, this needs to be like $60-65 working a $15-20 rebate better leveraging its lowly memory.
