The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro gaming laptop doesn’t perform as well as it should, I’m going
to show you why and what you can do to improve it.
Just quickly for context, in case you missed my game benchmark video, this is how the Legion
5 pro compares against other laptops in Shadow of the Tomb Raider with the game’s benchmark
at max settings.
I’ve got other 3070 laptops with the same GPU power limits hitting 120 FPS and above,
so what’s up?
On paper I’d expect the 5 pro to be up there with those other 3070 laptops, as it’s got
a good CPU, good GPU, dual channel memory, and the ability of disabling optimus with
the MUX switch, but something is holding it back.
Upon looking inside I noticed that the memory appeared to have chips on one side rather
than both.
This isn’t necessarily an issue in itself, but it did make me realize that the memory
is pretty much the only thing I can change to affect the performance.
Both the CPU and GPU are soldered to the motherboard and can’t be changed, so I tried swapping
the memory.
Now I wasn’t expecting much of a difference, as the memory that came with my 5 Pro and
the kit I swapped it with both have two 8 gig sticks in dual channel.
Both run at DDR4-3200, they both show with same timings of CL22 and both are single rank.
Both memory kits appear to be about the same, so let’s see what the differences are in
some games, then afterwards I’ll explain what’s going on.
All testing was done with the same Windows updates, Nvidia drivers and BIOS.
Literally all that’s changed is the memory, and that new kit that I’ve tested with is
linked below in the description.
Here’s the difference in Shadow of the Tomb Raider with both memory configurations.
We’re seeing a 10% boost to average FPS with this simple change, and the Legion 5
pro is now where I’d expect it to be - just 1 FPS behind the XMG Neo 15, and to be fair
that one still has better memory as it’s dual rank.
Battlefield V was tested in campaign mode, and there was also a 10% boost to average
FPS in this one, however there was a much larger 51% improvement to the 1% low result.
In fact the 1% low result looked so good I retested it days later and got the same results,
the Legion 5 Pro with the new memory now has the best 1% low score in this game out of
all laptops I’ve ever tested.
Far Cry 5 was tested with the games benchmark, and we’re looking at a 12% increase to average
frame rate in this one.
There’s also a 12% boost to 1% low as well, so not quite the massive difference noted
in battlefield V, but clearly there are still decent gains to be had.
So that new memory is clearly offering an improvement in games, but why is this the
case when the specs of both memory kits are essentially the same?
I’ve run the Aida64 memory test on both, and we can see that the new memory kit is
offering some nice improvements to memory speeds and even cache speeds, so it’s certainly
helping out compared to the default stock memory.
I’ve used the zentimings software to show more information about the memory, and when
we get down into the weeds we can see that there are actually some differences between
the RAM in the secondary timings, particularly to tRFC.
I wasn’t too familiar with these timings, so I asked Steve from Hardware Unboxed for
an opinion, and he said that tRFC can make a huge difference to Ryzen performance.
Another difference is that the stock memory is 1Rx16 while my memory is 1Rx8, the 1R means
single rank while the x8 or x16 specifies the number of banks, so I’m not sure if
that difference is also playing a role compared to the timings or if they’re linked.
So the difference is definitely in the memory, but is the memory in my review unit the same
as others?
To confirm I also reached out to some other reviewers that had the Legion 5 pro.
These are the results from Matthew Moniz in Canada, so same memory as mine and same timings.
Just Josh in the US also had the same memory with the same timings again, and one more
just to be safe - Stephen from ownordisown, also in the US, yet again had the same memory
in his 5 Pro too.
Big thanks to those guys for sending over that information and helping me confirm that
I’m not alone with this memory, you can check out their channels linked below.
I could also see the memory in Lisa’s review on the Mobile Tech Review channel had the
same memory, and if we set the Dave2D video to 4K and enhance, it’s the same kit again.
Alright so I’m clearly not alone in having this memory in the Legion 5 Pro.
My next question is are customers that are actually buying this laptop also getting the
same memory, or is it just something that was only sent out in review unit samples or
something.
To find out I joined the Legion community Discord server and asked some 5 pro owners
to share their results from zentimings.
These units were purchased in Germany and Singapore, but both have the same memory as
mine with the same timings.
It was good to confirm all timings were the same in case my sticks had issues or something,
but based on this they’re all the same.
This one was provided by Kal who is an admin of the Discord server, it was purchased in
the UK with 32 gigs of memory instead of 16, but as we can see many of the timings such
as tRFC are the same as my 16 gig kit, and they noted improvements with a different 32
gig kit which has better timings, so this may not just be limited to the 16 gig configuration
of the 5 Pro when you buy it from lenovo.
This isn’t by any means a huge sample size, but wherever I looked around the world the
same memory kept turning up in the 5 Pro.
The Lenovo parts list for the 5 Pro lists a number of different memory options, I’m
not sure if these are just what they are saying are compatible or if they represent what they
may potentially sell it with.
I’ve also retested a couple of games at the native 2560 by 1600 resolution to see
if the differences are as extreme at this higher resolution, as I was only looking at
1080p earlier.
I’ve redone Battlefield V because it had big differences at 1080p.
The differences at this higher resolution are much more minor in terms of average FPS,
however we’re still seeing some nice gains to the 1% lows, 15% higher at ultra settings.
Cyberpunk 2077 on the other hand is pretty GPU heavy, and the differences are much smaller
here.
Generally the new memory offers a little gain in the 1% lows at most setting levels, but
for the most part there’s no difference in average FPS most of the time.
Now I’m not going to go and redo all 13 games at 2 resolutions that I’ve previously
tested, as that takes about 3 days, plus those results that I’ve already shown in the game
benchmark video with the default RAM represent what you would actually see with a default
out of the box experience, as I tested it with that memory that the laptop seems to
come with.
Outside of gaming I’ve also tested Adobe Photoshop with the Puget Systems benchmark,
and we’re looking at a 5% boost here, so still an improvement, but the similarly specced
Neo 15 is a fair bit higher, but again that one has dual rank memory too.
This isn’t meant to be a single vs dual rank comparison, I’m just giving an example
as to why the 5 Pro was lower, maybe it could be even further improved with dual rank.
Yeah look, of course we’re expecting memory with better timings to perform better, what
a surprise!
But that’s not the point I’m making here.
The point isn’t even necessarily that the Legion 5 pro doesn’t have the best memory
available.
The main takeaway to me is that we can have two different kits of memory that perform
differently despite on paper having the same specs.
Those secondary timing values shown in the zentimings software don’t appear on the
laptop spec sheet when you buy it.
In fact it looks like most memory kits that you can find online to buy don’t specify
that information either, unless you go out of your way and find a detailed data sheet
or something.
I haven’t tested the different memory with any Intel laptops yet, so I’m not sure what
that difference might be, or if Ryzen is just extra sensitive to memory.
There’s nothing particularly special about the memory I installed to test with either,
it’s just a random reasonably priced kit I bought a while ago for testing.
Again the specific memory that I tested with is linked down in the description.
The performance difference in games appears to be a bigger deal at lower resolutions,
or in games that depend more on processor performance, so whether or not buying new
memory for your new Legion 5 Pro is worth it will depend on what you’re actually doing,
but as we’ve seen in this video there can clearly be gains to be had.
It’s also interesting that the memory in the Legion 7 has better timings than the 5
Pro, I’m not sure if it costs more or by how much, but when you consider a 5 Pro and
7 with same CPU plus GPU we’re probably going to see the 7 performing better simply
due to the better memory difference.
Unfortunately the full review of the Legion 5 Pro was delayed while I got to the bottom
of this, but now that I think I’ve worked it out the full review should be out in a
couple of days, so make sure you’re subscribed and don’t miss it!
Come and join me in Discord and get behind the scenes videos by supporting the channel
on Patreon, and for now you can check out some other Lenovo gaming laptop content over
here, so I’ll see you over in one of those videos next.