Confusion regarding AMD Radeon R4 and R5 graphic cards.

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AndroidEnthusiast

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Sep 5, 2014
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Hello. I'm planning on buying a Lenovo g50-45 notebook (80e3014fin) which has an AMD A8 6410 quad core processor, 1.5gb integrated AMD R4 graphics and 512mb dedicated AMD Radeon R5 M230 card.
I did some research on Game Debate and some other websites and found out that the R5 M230 comes with 2GB memory, and so does R4. Then how come they are having a lower memory on the laptop which I'm intending to buy.
Also, according to game debate, the R5 M230 is capable of handling some modern demanding games at low resolutions (there's a YouTube video of a guy playing BF4 quite smoothly on medium settings on a similarly configured laptop), so will my Radeon R5 M230 be able to play such games given a lower memory i.e. 512mb?

Sorry for being a noob, but some clarification would be really appreciated.

Thankyou.
 
Solution
Moonstick2
So from reading around and looking at this video (part of the source of confusion), I think I understand what's going on.

This G50-45 doesn't include an R5 M230 2GB. A previous version of the G50-45 did, but coupled with an A6-6310 and some fancy Enduro feature to switch between the R5 and the R4 on the APU.

This G50-45 has an A8-6410 APU with a R5 core (which it seems it part of the R4 family, but faster than the R4 GPU). The R5 has been given 512 MB of dedicated VRAM on the motherboard and has access to 2 GB VRAM in total by using up to 1.5 GB of the system RAM.

To answer the OP's question, they can effectively treat the laptop as having a 2GB graphics card but could run into trouble if the rest of the system requires more...
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Creme

Creme

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I think the 512mb dedicated pertains to the R4, not the R5 M230, most websites state it as a 2GB card. If you turn settings down, many games will be playable, but newer ones will struggle more and more, except the really well optimized ones like Alien Isolation.
 
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Moonstick2

Moonstick2

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The 6410 is an APU processor meaning the CPU and GPU are integrated onto the same single chip. The 6410 has R5 graphics, not R4, and shares system memory with the CPU. 512 MB definitely sounds too low for that card. What some laptop makers do is install some onboard RAM dedicated to the integrated graphics, that the iGPU can use before cutting into system memory. In that case the 512 MB would apply to the R5 on the 6410 (which would then cut into system RAM if it needed more), whilst in this case there's a separate R5 card with its own memory (probably 2 GB as mentioned above, but it won't be able to top this up with system RAM).

Maybe post a link to the laptop you're thinking of buying and people can check its specs, as the R5 card doesn't seem to be a standard inclusion.
 
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Moonstick2

Moonstick2

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Oct 3, 2014
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So from reading around and looking at this video (part of the source of confusion), I think I understand what's going on.

This G50-45 doesn't include an R5 M230 2GB. A previous version of the G50-45 did, but coupled with an A6-6310 and some fancy Enduro feature to switch between the R5 and the R4 on the APU.

This G50-45 has an A8-6410 APU with a R5 core (which it seems it part of the R4 family, but faster than the R4 GPU). The R5 has been given 512 MB of dedicated VRAM on the motherboard and has access to 2 GB VRAM in total by using up to 1.5 GB of the system RAM.

To answer the OP's question, they can effectively treat the laptop as having a 2GB graphics card but could run into trouble if the rest of the system requires more than 2.5 GB RAM at the same time. More importantly, judging by this the A8-6410 GPU offers poorer than the R5 M230. I can't find any BF4 benchmarks run on a A8-6410 alone.
 
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