What Games Can AMD Radeon R4 Graphics Play? [Surprising List]

by

The Radeon R4 mobile graphics processor was launch by AMD in June of 2014. It’s based on the ‘Beema’ graphics architecture and it supports DirectX 12. This means that many modern games can run smoothly on a Radeon R4 Mobile GPU. You may be asking yourself, what games can AMD Radeon R4 graphics play?

While not a very powerful GPU, the Radeon R4 will run around half of the top 9,000 PC games. This is mainly because that 9000 title figure includes a lot of older games. The AMD Radeon R4 graphics processor can run 26% of those 9000 games on high settings at reasonable resolutions.

In this article, we will take a look at just what games the Radeon R4 can run. We will also show you how you can make your Radeon R4 graphics run better by using AMD’s overdrive software.

 Radeon R4 Graphics Compatibility

So, What games can AMD Radeon R4 graphics play? Pretty much all games will work, they just may not all be playable. More than you may think will be playable, though. Some will even run very well on just integrated graphics. The AMD Radeon R4 graphics processor is categorized as a budget GPU because it costs $0. It comes built into some AMD APUs such as the A6-6310.

It’s truly amazing what kind of performance you can get today out of integrated graphics. You used to have an add-in card for that. Now, you only need an add-in card if you want more performance.

And not even the kind of graphics that are built into the motherboard, but the kind of graphics that are built into a CPU. This means you don’t even need a separate chip on your motherboard for good graphics. Now, all it takes is a tiny portion of the CPU itself.

Radeon R4 Specs

Manufacturer:  AMD
Age: 6 generations old
Category: Budget
VRAM: Variable [Uses System RAM for Video Memory]
DirectX: 11.2 

This graphics processor has 128 shading units, an 8 texture mapping unit, and 4 ROPs. It has an 800 MHz maximum GPU operating frequency and consumes about 15 W of power.

What games can AMD Radeon R4 graphics play?

Below is a list of popular PC games. In this chart, you can see on the right-hand side whether or not your AMD Radeon R4 integrated graphics processor meets the minimum system requirements for the game.

Remember: If the game you are wanting to play has a red circle, it does not mean that your Radeon R4 won’t play the game. It just means that the people that made the game feel as though the game won’t as well as it is supposed to on your hardware. It could still be playable.

For example, you can see that Team Fortress 2 calls for more performance than the Radeon R4 can provide, yet it will run the game just fine with the settings turned down:

Here you can see that you can even play GTA: V with Radeon R4 Graphics:

How can I increase my Radeon R4 Performance?

Changing the in-game graphics settings will drastically increase performance in any game. Just look in the settings for the game and look for something that says graphics or advanced display settings.

There, you will see options for things like texture quality, anti-aliasing, and other performance-related settings. Adjust them all the way to the lowest setting and see how the game runs. It should run much, much better.

Don’t stop here though. Those settings are there for a reason. Turn them up a little and check the performance of the game. Do that a few times until you find a good balance between making the game look good and making the game run well.

1. Increase VRAM by Adding RAM Capacity

In integrated graphics solutions such as the Radeon R4, VRAM, or Video Random Access Memory, is an allocated amount of system memory that is reserved for graphics and pixel data being processed by the GPU.

So, when it comes to increasing VRAM, there are two ways. You can check to see if the BIOS has an option. The BIOS or Basic Input Output System is where the computer’s basic setup information is stored.

Some motherboard manufacturers put settings in the BIOS to govern how much system memory is allocated for VRAM. Look around in your BIOS’s advanced settings to find this option. If there is no option, the only way to increase your VRAM is to increase your system RAM.

Adding to your PC’s RAM capacity will, in most cases, automatically increase the VRAM. Take the example of a system with 2 GB of system RAM. That PC may allocate 256 MB of that memory to VRAM. So, most of the time, if you double the amount of system RAM to 4GB, you also double your graphics RAM to 512MB.

2. Increase VRAM Speed by Running in Dual Channel

Memory speed can be just as important as memory size. Having a lot of memory is good, but if you cant move data in and out of that memory quickly, it may just become another bottleneck.

Full-fledged graphics cards have their own memory modules and do not share RAM with system memory. The memory modules on those graphics cards are much, much faster than standard desktop system memory.

Because of this, when running integrated graphics, it is important to have the fastest desktop memory your system can run. It’s also important for that memory to be in the fastest configuration possible. A computer usually has 2 or more DIMM slots. A DIMM slot is where system memory is installed.

Due to the nature of commonly used computer architectures, having 2 sticks of memory is always faster than 1. So, it is better to have two 2GB sticks of RAM vs just a single 4GB stick. When there is more than one memory module installed, the RAM performs twice as fast.

3. Increase Performance With AMD Graphic Overdrive

AMD provides it is with the AMD Graphic Overdrive software. This software package can provide extra performance for Radeon GPUs. The best part is that AMD Overdrive is completely free. Also, it is very easy to use.

NOTE: It’s very important to use caution when using AMD Graphic Overdrive because it is a component tuning application. You can follow these steps to launch AMD Graphic Overdrive.

  • Right-click the desktop and select AMD Catalyst Control Center.
  • Then, select the Performance and then AMD OverDrive. You can find this in the AMD Catalyst Control Center window.
  • After that, Click Accept to approve the license agreement.
  • Wait a moment and then the OverDrive menu will show up.
  • After it does, click Configure Graphic OverDrive.
  • Enable Graphic OverDrive.

Once you are in the utility, there are three options that you can choose from:

    • High-Performance GPU Clock Setting: to set the clock settings of the computer GPU.
    • High-Performance Memory Clock Settings: to set your computer’s memory clock (VRAM).
    • Enable Manual Fan Control: to set the fan manually.
  • Slide the slider of the High-Performance Memory Clock Settings to improve your computer’s VRAM performance.
  • You should also improve the GPU performance.
  • Click Apply to run the changes
  • Addendum: to find out the maximum clock you are using, do trial and error. Add a clock memory interval to 100Mhz, then, run any game or program. If there is a crash down on the memory clock interval, keep continuing until you find the maximum clock for your computer.

Conclusion

Even though it’s an older platform, out of the box, AMD R4-based systems can play quite a few PC titles. As we have seen in this article, you can increase the number of playable games by increasing the performance of your Radeon R4 graphics processor.

The Radeon R4 may not be the most powerful GPU there is, but it will about 50% of the 9,000 PC games, with 26% of those games running well on on high settings.

It’s really is astonishing what kind of performance you can get out of integrated graphics today.