How well does Lenovo’s new Legion 5 gaming laptop actually perform in games?
To find out I’ve tested it in 10 different games at all setting levels, I’ve compared
it against other gaming laptops, and I’ve also upgraded the memory to see what sort
of a speed boost is on offer.
My Legion 5 has an 8 core AMD Ryzen 7 5800H processor, Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics, 16 gigs
of memory in dual channel and a 1080p 165Hz screen.
There are also other cheaper configurations available though, you can find examples and
check updated prices with those links down in the description.
Now as was the case with the more expensive Lenovo Legion 5 Pro, the regular Legion 5
does use the slower X16 memory, or at least the configuration that I’ve got here that
I bought with my own money came with that memory.
You can refer to this video if you want the details, but essentially it should be possible
to get a speed boost in games by upgrading the memory.
Due to all the supply issues at the moment, a lot of laptop manufacturers seem to be sticking
to that slower memory.
Anyway I’ve tested both so that we can see the difference.
The Lenovo Vantage software, the control panel for the laptop, gives us the option to enable
or disable panel overdrive.
This is meant to affect screen response time, but I didn’t see a difference with it on
or off, so not sure if it's a bug, but with it on I was seeing under 7ms for average grey-to-grey
response time.
It’s not looking super amazing compared to other laptops, even the 144Hz Legion 5
from last year was more than a couple of milliseconds faster, so maybe the overdrive mode isn’t
properly working, but hey it’s still ahead of the 165Hz panel in the Blade 14.
The total system latency is also on the lower side compared to others, but again the slower
screen response time will contribute here.
This is the total amount of time between a mouse button press and when the gun shot fires
in CS:GO.
Now in a GPU only stress test I confirmed that the RTX 3060 in my Legion 5 could run
up to 130 watts, but with the processor also under heavy stress test this would lower to
115 watts.
So basically it’s a full powered RTX 3060, according to the Nvidia spec sheet at least.
The Vantage software offers different performance profiles.
I’ve done all testing with the highest performance mode enabled for best results.
By default there’s no overclocking applied, however it is possible to go into the BIOS
and manually enable GPU overclocking.
I haven’t done this though as it’s not the default and there’s no option to enable
it through the software.
Where possible I try to test with defaults, and honestly I don’t think all that many
people are going to go into the BIOS manually just to enable GPU overclocking, but if you
did turn this on then maybe you could expect a few frames difference to what I’m showing
here.
At the end of the day I don’t think it’s a big deal that I’m not including it on
this laptop as you can use third party software like MSI Afterburner to overclock the GPU
of pretty much any laptop, so it’s not like this is a unique feature of the Legion 5.
The Legion 5 has a MUX switch, which they call hybrid mode in the Vantage software.
This lets us disable or enable the integrated Radeon graphics after a reboot.
All of the game benchmarks in this video have been done with hybrid mode disabled for best
results.
Alright, so let’s start out by seeing how well the Legion 5 performs in 10 different
games both with the stock memory and with the memory upgrade.
The stock memory that the laptop ships with is on the left, while the memory I’ve installed
and also tested with is on the right.
Both sets have two 8 gig sticks of DDR4-3200 CL22 memory and both are single rank.
The difference is that the stock memory it ships with has slower timings and X16 banks.
After those 10 games I’ll compare the Legion 5 against a bunch of other laptops, or you
can time travel at any point with those timestamps down below.
Cyberpunk 2077 was tested with the same run through the game.
I’ve got the stock RAM that the laptop actually ships with shown by the red bars, the upgraded
memory shown by the purple bars, and all setting presets of the game have been tested with
lowest down the bottom and highest up the top.
There’s a much bigger difference between the memory configurations with the ray tracing
presets up the top, otherwise at ultra settings the new memory was just giving a 2 FPS boost,
much smaller comparatively.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with the games benchmark.
The upgraded memory was around 16% faster with the highest ultra setting preset, the
biggest difference seen out of all 10 games tested in terms of percentage at max settings,
though in terms of actual FPS it’s just a 7 to 8 frame difference, with similar changes
seen at the lower setting presets too.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was also tested with the games benchmark, but there was far
less of a difference here, basically no real change with small differences one way or the
other, margin of error stuff realistically so let’s move on.
Control was tested running through the same part of the game.
This is a fairly GPU heavy game, so not too surprising that the average FPS was basically
the same at both medium and high settings, with the new memory offering slight gains
to the 1% lows.
Low settings was reaching 8% higher average FPS with the new memory though.
If we enable ray tracing the new memory at max settings was actually a bit lower than
the old memory, though there was basically no change at the lower setting presets.
With DLSS enabled the new memory configuration was back ahead, but it’s only an extremely
small amount in most instances.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the games benchmark and had one of the largest
differences out of all games tested.
At max settings the upgraded RAM was offering a 9% boost to average FPS, but 100 FPS at
max settings is honestly still plenty for this test, though the lowest setting preset
had a 19% boost to average FPS with the new memory.
Microsoft Flight Simulator was tested in the Sydney landing challenge, and the new memory
was able to offer some improvements here too.
We’re seeing almost 8% higher average FPS with low-end settings, and about a 7% boost
to average FPS at the highest ultra setting preset, which was just able to hit 30 FPS.
Watch Dogs Legion was tested with the game's benchmark.
Like Control with ray tracing, max settings was slightly ahead with the stock memory,
however this definitely wasn’t the case at all of the lower setting levels.
Low settings for instance was reaching 17% higher average FPS with the new memory.
Fortnite was tested with the same replay file both times, so the exact same test pass through
the game.
Like a lot of other titles tested, much smaller differences at the higher setting presets,
presumably as we start becoming less CPU bound where memory matters more.
At low settings the new memory was offering an 8% boost to average FPS, below the 10 game
average.
CS:GO was around 10% faster at minimum settings with the new memory, and about 8.5% faster
at max settings with the new memory, above average gains from this esports title where
higher frame rates are typically more important.
The gains in Battlefield V were smaller with the new memory, but still present.
At ultra settings the average frame rate was just 4% higher, or less than 5 FPS, while
at low settings there’s an 8% gain with the new memory.
On average out of all 10 games tested, the Legion 5 with the memory upgrade was performing
less than 5% faster than the stock memory configuration, so not as big of a difference
as I was expecting, but hey still an easy way to boost gaming performance.
As we can see, results really depend on the game.
There’s a bigger advantage for the memory upgrade if we instead compare the games with
the lowest setting presets.
This is likely because memory makes a bigger difference to the processor, and the processor
is a bigger factor in gaming performance at lower settings where we’re less likely to
be limited by the GPU.
Honestly if you’re getting RTX 3060 graphics at 1080p you’re probably going to be targeting
higher settings anyway, so depending on the game there will probably be less of an incentive
to actually upgrade the memory.
I wouldn’t say it’s necessary, but depending on the game, as we did see we could get some
nice improvements with the new memory.
Selling the memory that ships with the laptop and buying new memory for a speed boost in
games is definitely an option at least.
Now that we’ve got an idea of what sort of a speed boost is on offer with the upgraded
memory let’s see how the Legion 5 stacks up against other laptops.
Cyberpunk 2077 was tested in little China with the street kid life path on all laptops,
and I’ve got the Legion 5 with stock RAM highlighted in red, and the upgraded RAM highlighted
in green.
The memory change is giving a larger boost to 1% lows than average FPS in this test,
but even with stock RAM this is still the fastest RTX 3060 I’ve tested so far.
The MSI GS76 with lower GPU power limit is about 10 FPS behind, and similar deal for
the even lower wattage 3060 in the Zephyrus G14, though that is also much smaller too.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with the game’s benchmark.
There’s a bit more of a difference this time between the stock and upgraded RAM.
The upgraded Legion 5 is just a few FPS behind the i9 and RTX 3070 in the Zephyrus M16 one
position ahead, though the M16 is held back by optimus, and again even the stock memory
Legion 5 is beating the other 3060 laptops that I’ve tested so far.
Impressively the Dell G5 with last gen 5600M is close to the 3060s.
Control was tested running through the same part of the game on all laptops.
There’s basically no difference in this GPU heavy game with the upgraded memory, and
we’re just a couple FPS behind the higher specced HP Omen 15 with RTX 3070, presumably
due to the Omen’s lower GPU power limit and lack of disabling optimus.
The Legion 5 is still the best 3060 result I’ve got, easily ahead of the lower wattage
MSI GS76 and ASUS G14 below, and we’re reaching more than 60% higher average FPS compared
to the last gen Legion 5 with GTX 1660 Ti.
I’m actually going to compare the RTX 3060 against the GTX 1660 Ti using my Legion 5,
so if you’re new to the channel make sure you get subscribed for that upcoming future
content, as well as for the full review of the Legion 5.
Come and join me in Discord and get behind the scenes videos by supporting the channel
on Patreon, and come and check out some of my other videos over here next, I’ll see
you over in one of those.