Benchmarking AMD Ryzen 5 5500U Linux Performance With A $450 Lenovo Laptop

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500U with six cores / twelve threads within a Lenovo laptop at $449 USD is quite a steal. This is also my first time benchmarking the AMD Ryzen 5 5500U after waiting months on Ryzen 5000 series laptop availability. Here are some initial benchmarks of the Ryzen 5 5500U under Ubuntu 21.04 Linux against various other Intel/AMD laptops.

The Ryzen 5 5500U is a Zen 2 based laptop processor rather than Zen 3 with the higher-end 5000 series models. However, over the previous-generation Ryzen 5 4500U, there is now SMT to offer 12 threads rather than 6/6 with the prior generation. The 5500U though carries a 2.1GHz base frequency rather than the 2.3GHz base with the 4500U while both have a turbo up to 4.0GHz. The 5500U also has the benefit of a 64K L1 cache per core rather than 32K.

I'm still working on getting my hands on a Zen 3 based AMD Ryzen 5000 series laptop for Linux testing - given the general lack of laptop vendor interest in Linux, it generally comes down to what I find available to purchase via retail channels. During these supply chain struggles, it's been checking Internet retailers daily for any interesting (and affordable) models. When seeing the Lenovo Ideapad 3 15 with Ryzen 5 5500U listed for just $449 USD at Walmart and available, I decided to order one for testing. (I purchased it last week for $449.00 USD though at the moment is now increased to $479 USD.) A Ryzen 5 6c/12t Lenovo laptop is almost as much of a steal as the prior $199 laptop with Ryzen 3 processor.

This budget Ryzen 5500U laptop features a 15.6-inch 1080p display, 8GB of RAM (2 x 4GB Samsung DDR4-3200), 256GB NVMe Samsung SSD, and makes use of the Radeon 7 Graphics found with the 5500U. By default the laptop ships with Microsoft Windows 10 Home.

In using the laptop so far over the past week, this Lenovo IdeaPad 3 15 (82KU003NUS) has worked out rather well for the price. The two main sore points are just 8GB of RAM and not using a USB-C power connector. The 8GB of RAM is a disappointment but not unexpected given the price.

At least from the Linux experience on the IdeaPad 3 15 using Ubuntu 21.04 with the Linux 5.11 kernel, it's been working out fine. The Vega graphics are working fine out-of-the-box on Ubuntu 21.04, the WiFi via the Qualcomm QCA6174 was working out-of-the-box, no display issues, and no storage or SecureBoot problems, among other areas where challenged by the occasional quirks. I am still more thoroughly testing the laptop on Linux now that getting the initial out-of-the-box Linux benchmarks completed but so far is working out fine.