AMD Ryzen 5 4500U Benchmarks - Previously Unimaginable Performance For Sub-$600 Laptops

A few weeks back I began delivering Ryzen 7 4700U Linux laptop benchmarks for this 8-core Zen 2 mobile CPU with Vega graphics. The results have been very good and the support is in good shape with the latest Linux kernel, but many have been wondering about the Ryzen 5 4500U. The Ryzen 5 4500U is beginning to appear in several $500~600 USD laptops and offers six cores. Here are benchmarks and initial impressions with the Lenovo Flex 5 that features a 14-inch 1080p display, 16GB dual channel memory, 256GB SSD, and the Ryzen 5 4500U all for just $599!

Given the overwhelming interest by readers in the Ryzen 5 4500U in it appearing in several budget-friendly laptops, curiosity got the best of me for testing this laptop as well as with there not being many (Windows) benchmarks in general for the 4500U at this point. As usual with most laptop vendors not being interested in laptop coverage, I ended up buying the laptop last week as a fun testing candidate given Phoronix turning 16 years old this week - a birthday of benchmarking! The most interesting value laptop I've found with the Ryzen 5 4500U has been the Lenovo Flex 5 15-inch 2-in-1 that has the Ryzen 5 4500U with a 1080p display, 2 x 8GB DDR4-3200 memory, Vega graphics, and a 256GB NVMe SSD all for just $599. The particular SKU is 81X20005US for those looking for a sub-$600 laptop.

The AMD Ryzen 5 4500U is a six core processor with a 2.3GHz base clock and maximum boost clock of 4.0GHz. There is an 8MB L3 cache and the default TDP is 15 Watts but can be configured up to 25 Watts or as low as 10 Watts. Like the rest of the Renoir line-up, Radeon Vega graphics are employed.

The Lenovo Flex 5 build quality is quite good for sub-$600 and better than I expected. While I have had this laptop for just several days so far, it's been working out quite well. Similar to the Lenovo laptop with Ryzen 7 4700U, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS can boot from the install media and install without any major issues -- touchpad and keyboard working, WiFi is working, etc. But there is not working graphics so once Ubuntu (or other distribution) is installed, you will want to upgrade to the latest kernel for working Renoir graphics. I recommend using the newly-released Linux 5.7 kernel for best support although with Linux 5.6 you should be in fairly good standing as well. With Linux 5.7 the Renoir graphics have been working well, blacklight controls are working, etc.

So as far as core functionality is concerned, with the Ryzen 5 4500U / Lenovo Flex 5 it is very easy to get going with recent Linux distribution releases and moving up to Linux 5.6~5.7. Further tests on other distributions and more will be coming in the weeks ahead on Phoronix.

The different mobile processors benchmarked in this article based on the laptops I had locally for testing off Ubuntu 20.04 included:

- Core i5 5300U
- Core i7 5600U
- Core i5 8265U
- Core i7 6700HQ
- Core i7 8550U
- Core i7 8565U
- Core i7 9750H
- Core i7 1065G7
- Ryzen 3 3200U
- Ryzen 5 4500U
- Ryzen 7 4700U

All of these processors were recently tested off Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Via the Phoronix Test Suite a wide range of benchmarks were carried out with more on the way. First up are all the CPU/system benchmarks in this article followed by graphics/gaming tests and then thermal/power numbers for this Lenovo Flex 5.