I’ve Been Running The AMD Ryzen 7 4700U + Ubuntu 20.04 As My Main System
For about one and a half months now I have been using the AMD Ryzen 7 4700U as my main laptop paired with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. It’s been working out very well for not even being the top-of-the-line AMD Renoir SKU. Here is some additional commentary for those thinking about one of the new AMD laptops with Linux use.
Back in May I picked up a Lenovo IdeaPad 5 in order to deliver AMD Ryzen 7 4700U Linux benchmarks. This laptop for just over $800 USD came with a Ryzen 7 4700U, 16GB of RAM, 1080p display, 512GB NVMe storage. The performance of the Ryzen 7 4700U as an 8-core part with 2.0GHz base clock and 4.1GHz boost has been quite good and better than the Intel Whiskeylake Core i7 Dell XPS laptop I had been using as my daily driver. The Renoir graphics are also quite good for desktop use-cases.
While originally buying the laptop for AMD Renoir Linux testing due to a good deal, I was (and remained) decently impressed with the build quality of this Lenovo IdeaPad with never owning an IdeaPad model before but many ThinkPads over the years. I was impressed with the build quality of the laptop enough and the Ryzen 7 4700U performance that after my initial Linux testing I decided to make it my main laptop to replace the Dell XPS.
The Lenovo IdeaPad 5 build quality has been fine albeit especially during these pandemic times the vast majority of the time this laptop is connected to my KVM setup in the office. But with that said, driving a 4K display over HDMI with the Ryzen 7 4700U with Radeon Vega graphics has been working out fine. At least for my workflow of using GNOME Shell and keeping open Firefox, Thunderbird, GNOME Terminal, Gedit, and other applications, the Vega performance has been fine at 4K. This should get even better come GNOME 3.38 this autumn given all the performance optimizations on the GNOME side, but already it’s fine. The occasional YouTube video also works without issue. Obviously though the performance would come up short if expecting to game.
On the CPU side, the Ryzen 7 4700U eight-core mobile processor has proven to make a noticeable difference compared to an Intel Core i7 Whiskeylake and I have no complaints about the performance for heavy web browser usage with Firefox and Chrome, Thunderbird always running for mail and RSS, frequent GNOME Terminal usage, editing photos within GIMP for articles, writing articles in Gedit, coding in Gedit and GNOME Terminal, etc. During Phoronix Test Suite test profile development is also code compilation and other demanding tasks, though usually for the very heavy workloads I am doing that on the dozens of other systems around.
While originally I hoped to buy a Ryzen 4800/4900 series laptop, the budget has sadly not allowed, and the Ryzen 7 4700U has proven to be plenty capable out of this laptop I originally didn’t even intend to use for more than just frequent benchmarking. Similarly, there is the Ryzen 5 4500U with the Lenovo Flex 5 where I continue to be working on new Linux tests about daily (more interesting tests there slated for publishing next week).
As my main system, I have been using Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. With Ubuntu 20.04, as outlined in the earlier Ryzen 7 4700U, the main change needed is to upgrade the kernel for working accelerated graphics and battery reporting. I am using Linux 5.7 with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on this laptop and it’s been working out very well. I will be upgrading to Linux 5.8 shortly as there are some performance benefits.
Previously on my main system I was using Intel’s Clear Linux. But when it came to transitioning to a new laptop, given Clear Linux divesting sort of from the desktop (albeit still supported) and other internal reorganizations that have happened within Intel, didn’t instill much confidence in continuing to use it as my daily driver. While prior to Clear Linux I’ve been a longtime Fedora Workstation user, I have been quite happy with how Ubuntu 20.04 shaped up and all the work Canonical has been pouring into GNOME, so I decided to return to that as my daily OS. It’s been working out well and no complaints. We’ll see if that keeps up or if I move to Fedora Workstation whenever it comes time to move to a Renoir+1 laptop.
So all in over one month after moving to a Lenovo IdeaPad with Ryzen 7 4700U running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, I am quite happy with the laptop itself, the performance out of the Ryzen 7 4700U, and Ubuntu 20.04 for that matter as my daily OS these days. This IdeaPad has even been probably the cheapest laptop I’ve used as my daily system at least in many years if not ever yet the performance with the Ryzen 7 4700U has been great, the build quality of the laptop is good enough when being predominantly in the office attached to a keyboard and 4K display, and the Linux support is there if using a new enough kernel. This is also the first time in more than one decade my main laptop has been AMD powered. As for using Ubuntu again as the OS on my main production system, I am very happy with how Ubuntu 20.04 LTS turned out.
AMD Ryzen 7 4700U протестировали в Linux — результаты впечатляют
Процессоры Ryzen 4000 уже появились на рынке в нескольких моделях ноутбуков. Причём это линейки высокопроизводительных H и энергоэффективных U. И вот вторые как раз представляют особый интерес. Ресурс Phoronix сообщил о тестировании такого чипа, что особо интересно в свете отсутствия полноценных тестов.
«Подопытным» стал Lenovo IdeaPad 5 по цене в 816 долларов. Он оснащён процессором Ryzen 7 4700U, который располагает восемью ядрами без многопоточности. При этом он трудится на частоте 2,0-4,1 ГГц оснащён графическим ускорителем Vega 7. Самое интересное, что тестирование проводилось в операционной системе Linux.
Ниже можно посмотреть некоторые результаты тестирования. На деле их куда больше, однако выбраны наиболее важные.
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Как видим, в 3D-графике и просчёта видео Ryzen 7 4700U превосходит процессоры линейки H от компании Intel, а порой опережает даже мобильный Xeon. И это при том, что «красный» процессор характеризуется теплопакетом в 15 Вт, тогда как Core i9-9750H выдаёт на-года до 45 Вт тепла. Похоже, что формула «процессоры AMD медленные и горячие» уже неактуальна.
На самом деле причина проста — у Intel попросту нет энергоэффективных восьмиядерных процессоров для ноутбуков. Таким образом, «синий гигант» находится в позиции догоняющего. Отметим, что потребление энергии у новинки чуть выше, чем у i7-1065G7, но показатель производительности на ватт также ощутимо превосходит «синие» решения.
Наконец, напомним, что процессоры Intel до сих пор используют 14-нанометровое производство, тогда как AMD уже давно перешли на 7 нанометров и готовы к штурму 5 нанометров.
Initial AMD Ryzen 7 4700U Linux Performance Is Very Good
Since AMD Renoir laptops began shipping some weeks ago, I’ve been on the hunt for an interesting laptop to pick up for Linux testing and to potentially even use as my next main production laptop. Given the successes of AMD Zen 2 on the desktop and server front, I’ve been very eager to try out a Renoir laptop and last week picked up a Lenovo IdeaPad with Ryzen 7 4700U and the experience so far has been very good and with captivating Linux performance.
Between supply chain issues leading to Renoir laptops not launching as quickly as many would like paired with the limited models available in quantity so far mostly being paired with NVIDIA graphics, it took some weeks to find an interesting model for Linux testing. Paired with having to buy nearly all of the laptops we test at Phoronix retail for Linux testing (and COVID-19 slamming the ad revenues), I was pleased when finally finding the Lenovo IdeaPad 5 (14) for just $816 USD (normal retail price ~$850 USD). The Ryzen 7 4700U with eight cores and integrated graphics, 16GB of RAM, 1080p display, 512GB NVMe SSD storage, and all of the other basics. Quite the deal.
While I’ve gone through many ThinkPads over the past two decades, this was my first time buying an IdeaPad and was pleasantly surprised with the build quality. While I’ve just been testing out this laptop for several days so far, it’s been working out quite well and so far impressed by the hardware itself. The BIOS does allow easily disabling UEFI Secure Boot and AMD PSP as another plus.
The Ryzen 7 4700U is an eight core part (no SMT), 2.0GHz base clock, 4.1GHz boost clock, 8MB L3 cache, and a default TDP of 15 Watts. The Vega-based graphics have 7 GPU cores.
When booting the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS install media off USB, everything appeared to «just work» with the display quickly lighting up and hitting the GNOME 3.36 desktop. The Ubiquity installer picked right up, the WiFi was detected and working, and no NVMe SSD storage detection issues.
Overall everything seemed to be smooth sailing, but after rebooting into the new installation it was quickly noted that LLVMpipe rendering was in use rather than the actual Renoir graphics. Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is shipping with the Linux 5.4 kernel and Mesa 20.0, which that kernel is slightly too old for Renoir out-of-the-box. So I fetched the latest Linux 5.6 stable kernel from the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA and rebooted. Bam, graphics working! The graphics are working fine though in this article is primarily focusing on the CPU side performance.
The graphics support were one of the main worries going into this Linux testing given some past troubled launches, but long story short when switching to Linux 5.6 the Ryzen 7 4700U graphics on the Lenovo IdeaPad have been working without hitting any troubles yet. Another caveat discovered is needing Linux 5.7 Git if wanting the battery reporting to work.
I’ll have a lot of benchmarks from this laptop coming up but for today is just an initial preview against a few other laptops running Ubuntu Linux. Tests looking more at the efficiency and especially the graphics performance relative to Intel Gen9/Gen11 will be up in the coming days.
Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu 20.04 Linux Performance On The AMD Ryzen 7 4700U
While most of you are well aware how Linux often slaughters Microsoft Windows performance on high-end desktop and platform servers with large core counts, on smaller systems it can be a different story and often comes down to the particular workloads and any peculiarities of the hardware under test. With recently buying the Lenovo IdeaPad 5 (14) for our AMD Ryzen 7 4700U Linux benchmarking, here are some benchmarks for how that Zen 2 laptop is comparing with different workloads between Windows 10 and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.
The AMD Ryzen 7 4700U Renoir with its eight cores and Vega graphics were running within the Lenovo IdeaPad with 2 x 8GB DDR4-3200 memory, 512GB Samsung NVMe SSD, and 1080p panel. I have been quite impressed by the Ryzen 7 4700U performance so far under Linux as my lone Zen 2 laptop so far for testing.
The OS as shipped by Lenovo with Microsoft Windows 10 Home Build 18363 was tested on the IdeaPad before wiping it for our Linux benchmarking. All system updates were applied prior to benchmarking as well as using the latest Lenovo BIOS.
Following that the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS benchmarking was carried out. As outlined in earlier articles on AMD Renoir graphics on Linux, Renoir graphics need a kernel than what is shipped by Ubuntu 20.04 (Linux 5.4). Using Linux 5.6~5.7 users are in good shape for Renoir laptops. For this testing it was Ubuntu 20.04 LTS installed plus all system updates and then moving to Linux 5.7 Git.
Via the Phoronix Test Suite a wide range benchmarks were run on Windows 10 and Linux for seeing how the performance looks for this AMD Zen 2 laptop.