Radeon R5 M230: FPS benchmarks and laptop guide

The AMD Radeon R5 M230 is a 2014 entry-level discrete GPU of the GCN 1.0 era — the kind of chip that existed to put "dual graphics" on a budget laptop sticker. This guide covers its 25 benchmarked games at 1080p on high and the single catalog listing matched to it.

Where the Radeon R5 M230 sits in 2026

A catalog score of 2.2 ranks it 309th of 341 — the bottom decile. The neighbors are period entry parts: the GeForce GT 525M (2.3), GT 740M (2.2) and GT 720M (2.2) above; the Quadro 2000M (2.1), Radeon HD 7570M (2.1) and R7 M365X (2.1) below. There is no flattering reading available — this was the lowest practical tier of discrete graphics when new, and a decade of integrated-GPU progress has buried it.

What the chip brings

GCN 1.0 architecture on 28nm: 320 shader cores rated at just 0.55 teraflops, paired with 4GB of DDR3 memory — slow memory on a weak core, the classic budget-GPU mismatch. Public benchmarks: PassMark 429, Fire Strike 771. The 4GB figure was a sticker feature; the chip had no throughput to exploit it.

FPS in games at 1080p

The legacy capped quartet posts its 240/140 ceilings — CS:GO, Overwatch, GTA V and PUBG run on engines old enough to mask any GPU's weakness. Below that the table descends immediately: Valorant at 30 fps, F1 2014 at 29, GRID Autosport 19, The Sims 4 16, DOTA 2 14, Alien: Isolation and Wolfenstein: The New Order 10, Civilization: Beyond Earth and Watch Dogs 8, Shadow of Mordor 7. The modern block is closed entirely: Fortnite 2, Counter-Strike 2 3, Cyberpunk 2077 2, The Witcher 3 6, Forza Horizon 4 6, with Forza Horizon 5, Metro Exodus and Far Cry 5 at 1 fps. Those numbers are a firm "no" rather than a challenge.

Laptops that carry it

One catalog listing matches: a Lenovo Flex 2-14D convertible at $182 — a budget 14-inch flex-hinge laptop of the mid-2010s. Its medians describe the class: gaming index 11, USComp score 5, with portability (56.3) and mobility (60) as the machine's actual strengths. Graphics was never this laptop's job; the sticker said otherwise.

Bottom line

The R5 M230 is a case study in badge engineering: 4GB of DDR3 on a 320-core chip delivered marketing, not performance. For a 2026 buyer the chip is irrelevant — the host Flex 2-14D at $182 is only interesting as a cheap typing machine, and any modern integrated GPU outruns this card by a wide margin. If the listing is cheap enough for a kitchen-table laptop, fine — but the graphics should factor into the price as zero.