Lenovo’s new Legion 5 gaming laptop is finally here, but are the RTX 3060
graphics actually a good match for the 1440p screen? We’ve tested 15 games to find out!
I bought the mid-range configuration which has AMD’s 8 core Ryzen 7 6800H CPU,
Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics, 16 gigs of DDR5 memory and a 165Hz 1440p screen with G-Sync.
You can customize it and choose lower specs for less money with that link below the video.
Now the RTX 3060 in this year’s Legion 5 runs at 130 watts, which isn’t quite the maximum
allowed by Nvidia, and this is important because GPU power determines performance in games.
Last year in 2021, the highest power limit you could get an RTX 3060 laptop was 130 watts,
so what we’ve got here. But now this year in 2022, the Nvidia RTX 3060 goes up to 140 watts
as its new maximum. So Lenovo haven’t given us that extra 10 watts in this year’s Legion 5,
though to be fair, a 10 watt difference is only going to be very small.
Now although the 3060 in last year’s Legion 5 also maxed out at 130 watts,
that one also dropped down to 115 watts with the CPU also active. And now this year’s one
runs at 130 watts all the time, regardless of whether or not the CPU is loaded up. So based
on this, we are still expecting a performance improvement compared to last year’s Legion 5.
The Legion 5 also has a MUX switch and advanced optimus,
so games were tested without being limited by optimus for best performance.
The built in Vantage software also gives you the option to overclock the GPU with one click,
so we’ve tested with this enabled as it’s a very simple change that
I figured most of you would be likely to actually do if you had this laptop.
Now although my Legion 5 has a 1440p screen, you can also buy it with a 1080p screen,
so we’ll start out by comparing this laptop against a bunch of others in
3 games at both 1080p and 1440p resolutions.
Now honestly I think it’s pretty obvious that the RTX 3060 is more than capable in games at 1080p.
The bigger question to me personally was how does the 1440p screen actually hold up with a 3060?
So to answer this, after we look at those 3 comparison games, we’ll also check out
15 games at all setting levels to find out where the sweet spot is. And we’ll also look at how
features like ray tracing, DLSS and FSR perform. But first, let’s get into those comparisons!
Cyberpunk 2077 was tested the same on all laptops, and I’ve got this year’s Legion 5 shown by the
red highlight. It’s not actually too different compared to last year’s Legion 5 which was just
a couple of FPS behind. This year’s Legion 5 isn’t quite the best 3060 that we’ve tested, that goes
to the Vapor 15X aka Eluktronics MAX-15 just above it, likely because Intel generally beats AMD when
it comes to gaming, but also the 3060 in that one has a higher GPU power limit despite it being a
thinner laptop. We’ve got a different selection of laptops at the higher 1440p resolution as we
just haven't tested as many, and the difference between this year’s Legion 5 and last year’s is
even smaller here. The best 3060 tested so far is only 1 frame ahead of this year’s Legion 5,
which isn’t going to be a difference that anyone actually notices when playing.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with the games benchmark tool. Again it’s not the
best 3060 tested, that goes to the Intel based machine just above it with higher
GPU power limit. It’s scoring basically the same as a number of other 3060 laptops though,
including this year’s TUF A15 from ASUS, and last year’s Legion 5. At 1440p there’s less than
a 1 FPS difference with last year’s Legion 5, which is well within the margin of error range,
so let’s just say they perform the same here, and the other higher 140 watt 3060s weren’t too
much further ahead. Again it’s only a very small difference and not something you’d be
able to notice when playing, other differences like thermals and build quality will be more
important - so make sure you’re subscribed for my upcoming full review of the Legion 5.
Control is a GPU heavy game, and there’s a bit more of a gap between this year’s Legion 5
and last year’s, but again we’re talking about less than 3 FPS,
so it really doesn’t matter at all. There are other higher 3060s here,
but again with a 1 to 2 FPS gap they’re all basically performing the same,
not counting the lower wattage 3060 machines of course which are notably lower. At 1440p the
higher 140 watt 3060 in the TUF A15 was ahead of the Legion 5, but the Legion 5 is basically
tied with that higher powered 3060 in the machine just below it, and again these were doing better
compared to lower powered 3060 machines which are typically found in thinner or cheaper laptops.
Cool, so this year’s Legion 5 performs pretty well for a gaming laptop with RTX 3060 graphics.
Granted it’s not really that much different compared to last year’s Legion 5. Now I am
planning on comparison last year’s Legion 5 with this year’s Legion 5 in a dedicated video soon,
so make sure you’re subscribed for that, as there are a number of other differences than
just raw gaming performance. Maybe you can save some cash getting last year’s version instead.
But for now, let’s find out how well the RTX 3060 can actually run games at the
screen’s native 1440p resolution. Is the 3060 enough? If any of the 15 games tested have
FSR or DLSS, then we’ve tested with these features enabled,
as they’re just objectively great for boosting the performance of
mid-range hardware at higher resolutions like 1440p. So let’s see what this thing can do!
There was quite a big difference between minimum and maximum setting levels in Apex Legends.
Minimum settings were running extremely well, even the dips in performance, as shown by the 1% lows,
were higher than the screen’s refresh rate. Max settings was still above 60 FPS,
but if you’re playing competitively you’d probably want more frames.
Call of Duty Warzone was also tested with all settings at either minimum or maximum for the
same reason, these games don’t come with built in setting presets. This game has DLSS though,
and the performance difference was nowhere near as big here,
so might as well play with good settings if you want it looking good.
Fortnite also has DLSS and is definitely playable at max settings,
but if you’re playing competitively you probably want higher FPS,
and medium settings would get the average frame rate close to the screen’s 165Hz refresh rate.
Rainbow Six Siege runs on a potato, even at 1440p. Even the dips in performance,
aka 1% lows, were close to the screen’s refresh rate, so absolutely no problem at all here.
Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered was still running fine at max settings,
at least with DLSS set to quality mode. Lowering just one setting preset to high
was able to boost average FPS up to 100, which is definitely enough to play this game well.
Microsoft Flight Simulator on the other hand needed medium settings to run above 60 FPS,
but I don’t think this game needs a super high frame rate to play, so high settings should be
fine. Apparently DLSS is coming to this one soon, so expect a boost once that update rolls out.
Forza Horizon 5 was tested with the game’s benchmark if you want to compare
our results with your own laptop. Extreme settings aren’t doing too well at 1440p
with our RTX 3060 graphics, but one level down at ultra was much higher,
even the dips in performance were close to 60 FPS, while very low could get you almost 100 FPS more.
Far Cry 6 was also tested with the game’s benchmark tool, but with
FSR enabled. This game doesn’t have as much of a difference between maximum
and minimum settings, so you’re not gaining that much extra FPS by lowering the settings.
God of War came to PC from console, so it runs fairly well without needing super powerful
hardware. Our mid-range RTX 3060 was close to 60 FPS at max settings with DLSS enabled,
but honestly I think high settings is probably a good sweet spot in terms
of having the game look good while still performing fine.
Dying Light 2 wasn’t doing too well with the ray tracing presets enabled,
even with DLSS on. You could of course lower the DLSS quality level to boost FPS,
but at the expense of worse visual quality.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla doesn’t have DLSS or FSR, and although the frame
rates don’t look amazing, this is another game that doesn’t need high FPS to enjoy,
so high and very high settings should play well while still looking good.
Watch Dogs Legion was also tested with the game’s benchmark, and this one does have DLSS,
though ultra settings still weren't doing too well. You don’t need max
settings to have a good time though, very high settings still look excellent while
also giving you a massive 73% higher average FPS. This is in part due to
the 6 gigs of vram available to the 3060, as max settings says that it wants 8 gigs.
We tested Cyberpunk 2077 earlier in the comparison section, but now we’ve also got
ray tracing and DLSS results. The ray tracing results aren’t doing well, even with DLSS on.
Again we could lower the DLSS quality mode, or otherwise lower the resolution down to 1080p, but
that looks a bit blurrier on a 1440p screen, so you’re probably not going to want to use RT here.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was also compared earlier, and reached around 65 FPS at 1440p
high settings, so we can see the boost that DLSS is able to give us here.
Based on these results I don’t think I’d bother with ultra settings on this laptop,
high settings still look good enough to me in most games.
Control was running well with ray tracing enabled, but only with DLSS on,
as shown in the green bars, though this is one of the first games that ever had
RT and DLSS support, so it might not be as demanding compared to the newer titles
covered earlier, which generally struggled more with ray tracing.
So the RTX 3060 graphics are doing fairly well in games at 1440p. At least with the higher
GPU power limit found in the Legion 5. So what about the even thinner Legion Slim 7i? That one
also has RTX 3060 graphics too, but it maxes out with a 100 watt power limit. And it has a higher
2560 by 1600 screen resolution, so make sure you’re subscribed for my upcoming game benchmark
comparison with that model. And of course for the upcoming full review of this year’s Legion 5,
there’s going to be so much to cover and you don’t want to miss that!