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

Out of 139 different tests run across all of the five laptops/processors tested, the Ryzen 5 5500U came in first place 40% of the time -- largely, all of the multi-core benchmarks. In a few cases the older Ryzen 5 4500U came out ahead due to its slightly higher (200MHz) base clock but lacking SMT.

If taking the geometric mean of all 139 benchmarks, the Ryzen 5 5500U was the fastest of the tested processors by a slim lead. From the Ryzen 5 4500U to 5500U was about 11% higher performance and over the Core i7 1165G7 was about 10% higher performance in these CPU benchmarks. With the graphics tests is where the Intel Tiger Lake came out stronger overall against the Vega-based Radeon graphics found within the 5500U.

Overall the Ryzen 5 5500U is performing very well on Linux so far and shows to have quite a lot of potential for a mid-range laptop especially with some models such as the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 being available for under $500 USD -- assuming hardware availability keeps up.

Those wanting to look through all 139 benchmark results in total can see the initial run of data over on OpenBenchmarking.org.

For those curious about the thermals with the Lenovo IdeaPad 3, below are the thermal metrics across a variety of benchmarks. (Unfortunately no SoC power nubmers for the AMD_Energy Linux driver not supporting the consumer parts and that driver even being removed upstream now...) Overall the Ryzen 5 5500U within this new Lenovo IdeaPad did a fairly good job dissipating heat.

See all the thermal numbers per-benchmark and more via this result file.

As for the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 15 (82KU003NUS) itself, the laptop is quite nice for the low price while the 8GB RAM may be limiting for many. It's also unfortunate not using a USB-C power connector but overall a nice option in the sub-$500 space.