Lenovo Legion 5 and 7 (2020)

Lenovo revealed their new legion laptops yesterday.

https://www.ultrabookreview.com/36526-2020-lenovo-legion-5i-7i/





The AMD version is a instant buy for that price with a RTX 2060!

 

The AMD version's specs are confusing. HDR400 certified, but only 300 nits? 363mm width vs 396mm width on the Intel? So the AMD version, despite having identical dimensions and screen size, is just narrower in one dimension? No Freesync/Adaptive Sync? So is Lenovo going to strip this out of the AMD version, even though some AMD Thinkpads already had it for at least a year?

Also, the Intel low end version is bad. Quad core in 2020, 60Whr battery vs 80Whr, and GTX1650 vs RTX2060.

That being said, with the already odd specs on the AMD version and Lenovo's recent track record with bungling AMD specs, I have 0% faith the AMD version won't get decontented and stripped down before launch. Given that Lenovo only lists 8/16GB, maybe single channel DDR4 as well?

Either way, I'll believe it when I see it. They sold the outgoing version in Costco, so I'll believe it when I can test it out and buy one there.

 

Product page for the Legion 5 is now up in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand's website.
Battery size tankis optional.
And only Intel based Legion 7 gets bigger "ScreenScape" of 17inch.
As for dGPU there seems to be some kind of conflicting info between Lenovo product pages and the PSREF official documentation.
https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/Legion/Lenovo_Legion_5_15ARH05

I want a big screen for image rendering works. So no 17inch, no go. I'll likely be jumping to MSI vessel if Bravo17 is brought in to Singapore market. Or... If AfterShock brings in 17inch version of their FORGE R(XMG Apex) laptop.

 

Yeah i kinda agree but its still early so the information is all over the place. Having a quad core in 2020 is more than enough at least it wont run hot unlike the i7 6 cores CPUs. If the AMD version runs cooler than the intel version i'll definitely buy it but ofc imma wait until the reviews are out.

 

AMD are being screwed over by Intel pressure and bias. That's why there are no AMD laptops with RTX 2079 and 2080. They (almost all the manjor notebook manufacturers) are purposefully, and cynically, limiting the configs so as not to anger Intel.

 

True because Intel is finally losing their monopoly in laptop gaming. Just hoping AMD systems still wont run hotter and have less battery life than Intel systems. Its the main reason why i always go with Intel.

 

Losing gradually, not a big step as if production volume per model/series are on par with one another.
My reservation on when will we see AMD really risen up as competitive strong opponent... Probably until 6000 series?

The Brits gets a first taste of the AMD Aphrodisiac Red pill of daily computing power, that consumes less* energy to stress the body systems!
*(with U series APUs, but IMO, still looses little to INTEL's Blue U-gara in Mivrosoft's Office Excel tests)
With

https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/ideapad/s-series/IdeaPad-5-15ARE05/p/88IPS501393
@ GBP500 with "entry lvl'" 6 cores, thats hard to resist!​

 

AMD is either surpassing Intel or is at least comparable to them in battery life with Zen 2 Renoir (while offering GREATER CPU/IGP performance and more cores in a same or lower TDP package).

However, thermally speaking, OEMs' still seem to be 'crippling' AMD somewhat.
While the 4800H and 4900H (and the HS variants) do NOT seem to be thermal throttling, CPU+GPU all stress test indicates about 90 to 95 degrees Celsius temperatures on the CPU alone (and about 10 degrees lower on the GPU).
The GPU's are usually NV 1660ti and RTX 2060 MaxQ variants (which are rated at 60-80W TDP - and makes me wonder how/why are the GPU's heating up less than the more efficient CPU's).

These temps are for Asus and MSI laptops using Zen 2.

I don't find those temperatures sustainable or 'acceptable' if you ask me... certainly not if you expect to do any kind of content creation which in the long run could produce problems on other internal components (and lets not even go into the fan noise department - which is definitely not favorable for either Asus or MSI).

Granted, we don't know what kind of temperatures this Lenovo machine will have, but I have been very disappointed with OEM's cooling in Zen 2 laptops which emerged thus far (and it makes me question what the OEM's will do in regards to cooling once they start integrating AMD Navi GPU's like 5600M and 5700M which from a TDP point of view are a match for NV's mobile options, and should be same or better performance-wise) considering that past all AMD solutions have had disappointing cooling too.

AMD is ALREADY a strong and competitive opponent with Zen 2.
Zen 3 is right around the corner with some really promising increases in performance on CPU and iGP alone (nevermind the dGPU's).
So, it will probably be Zen 3 that possibly enables AMD greater penetration into the laptop market.
Zen 2 seems be making great strides and inroads... but thermally speaking, OEM's are still no designing proper cooling for these laptops.
And there's also the problem of pressure from Intel (who might indeed be bribing OEM's to not use Zen 2 in MINI-PC's... and if its happening there today, then its quite possible Intel is still lingering in the laptop market too).

The Lenovo machine will be interesting for sure, but I'd be more interested to see how will the cooling behave in such a unit (as Lenovo has a poor track record with giving AMD proper cooling - they actually gave Intel variants 2 cooling pipes vs just 1 cooling pipe for AMD variants).

 

Here are 2 different 15inch makes for ur reference on how much Lenovo had improved in dissipating heat from AMD CPUs.

ThinkPad E595 with Ryzen 3#00u from Japanese site that doesn't provide CPU model ref.

From NoteBookCheck review with 3700u


IdeaPad S145-15API with Athlon 300U pictures by NoteBookCheck

​

 

52.2 C (for 3xxxU version) vs 37.6 C (for Athlon 300U).
While the 3xxxU version comes with dual heat pipes, surface temperatures are nearly 15 degrees higher.
Seems like a large discrepancy (unless the hw itself has acceptable temps under load).
Or Lenovo's chassis is just badly designed.

EDIT: We do know that packing more cores and transistors on smaller dies can result in high temperature outputs... but why aren't OEM's redesigning their cooling to take that into consideration then?