Cantnot decide

OldGamerBear · January 22, 2022

Need help with deciding which laptop to buy.

One is lenovo ideapad ultraslim 3. It has ryzen 5 5500u, 12gb of ram, 17inch screen with 72% ntsc.

The other laptop is lenovo ideapad 5 pro with ryzen 5 5600h, 16gb of ram and 16 inch screen 100%srbg.

I like both of them but ideapad 3 is around 140$ cheaper, while on the other hand ideapad 5 has better cooling.

I plan to use laptop to start learning programming and some light gaming etc. Guild wars 2 at 720p, esports and older games like star wars kotor.

Thanks for your help.

Bombastinator · January 22, 2022

1 hour ago, OldGamerBear said:

Need help with deciding which laptop to buy.

One is lenovo ideapad ultraslim 3. It has ryzen 5 5500u, 12gb of ram, 17inch screen with 72% ntsc.

The other laptop is lenovo ideapad 5 pro with ryzen 5 5600h, 16gb of ram and 16 inch screen 100%srbg.

I like both of them but ideapad 3 is around 140$ cheaper, while on the other hand ideapad 5 has better cooling.

I plan to use laptop to start learning programming and some light gaming etc. Guild wars 2 at 720p, esports and older games like star wars kotor.

Thanks for your help.

12gb is a weird number. There is no such thing as 6 or 12gb memory sticks. 4x3 is possible but that would Imply it is flex memory, so it will be dual channel until 8gb of memory is used then I’m not sure whether it would be dual or single or how flex memory works. Could also be that it is 16gb as well with 4gb being used by something else. Number is odd though. It’s indicative of something but I have no idea what. 16gb would be either 2x8 or 1x16 so also dual or single depending on what is in there. Dual is generally a lot faster than single channel. Also with memory there is memory speed and CAS latency which together make memory speed. One can raise memory speed but also loosen CAS timings so one would have “faster” memory that actually isn’t faster at all. I’m not sure what better cooling means in this case. Both machines should have reviews available online. The two chips can also be checked specs wise.
Programming is just text editing so is more or less potato. Compiling and testing often isn’t though. It kind of depends on what you are doing. My suspicion is that the second machine will be a lot faster than the first one. I haven’t looked up any specs though so it could actually be reversed. AMD marketing did a bunch of weird stuff, and sometimes 5k series chips aren’t ryzen3 but ryzen2 or even ryzen+

Edited January 22, 2022 by Bombastinator

Darkseth · January 22, 2022

12gb Ram means: 4gb soldered on + 8gb Stick. Usually only "cheaper" devices have 4gb soldered, so that's a small red flag. That means: Other aspects like build quality can most likely be "cheap" too.

Only maximum 8gb Ram will run in Dual Channel, anything above (additional 4gb in this situation) will run in Single Channel. It's random, where the data will be stored.

Out of those 2, it's a nobrainer: Ideapad 5 Pro. Better build quality, better Specs, better Display (one of THE best Displays in the pricerange).

Ideapad 5 Pro Display isn't just much higher Resolution, which allows for more fine scaling, but also 16:10. You will see much more at the same time, which is great for programming. Probably much brighter too.

Those 140 Dollar are very well worth it. And the Chip is faster.

As of Ryzen 5000 series beeing Zen2 vs. Zen3:

The models with an odd number at second place are Zen2 based (but everything else is Ryzen 5000 architecture, just the Core is based on Zen2): Ryzen 3 5300u, Ryzen 5 5500u, Ryzen 7 5700u. should be only those 3 (Codename: Lucienne)

All others are Zen3 based. Codename: Cezanne

There isn't a single Ryzen 5000 chip that's based on Zen or Zen+. It's either Zen2 (just like 4000 series), or Zen3.

What can make the second machine faster is mainly it beeing a 35-45w H-series Chip over a 15-25w U-series Chip. Zen3 over Zen2 is a smaller difference here, but it's there. Maybe 5-10%?

Still, faster is faster.