Zen 3 slower than Zen 2: first benchmarks show the AMD Ryzen 7 5700U outperforming the Ryzen 7 5800U in most scenarios

The Ryzen 7 5800U is boasted as being the fastest CPU in AMD's current U-series lineup. It also holds the distinction of being a "proper" Zen 3 Cezanne processor in contrast to the Ryzen 7 5700U which is still based on last year's Zen 2 Lucienne architecture.

After having tested a small handful of retail laptops carrying the Ryzen 7 5700U and Ryzen 7 5800U, we've discovered that the performance differences between the two CPUs are actually very minor despite their generational differences in architecture. The Ryzen 7 5800U is just 100 MHz faster on paper (1.9 - 4.4 GHz vs. 1.8 - 4.2 GHz) meaning any differences will be mostly constrained by the Turbo potential and cooling solution of the laptop in question.

Our benchmarks below compare the three Ryzen 7 5700U laptops currently in our database to the first Ryzen 7 5800U laptop in the market. In multi-threaded loads, our Ryzen 7 5800U laptop often falls behind our fastest Ryzen 7 5700U laptop by about 10 to 15 percent even after accounting for throttling on all models. Conversely, the Ryzen 7 5800U is faster than the Ryzen 7 5700U in single-threaded operations by about 15 to 20 percent likely owing to the gen-to-gen IPC improvements over Zen 2.

As for the integrated Radeon RX Vega 8 graphics, the Ryzen 7 5800U is again consistently behind our HP Envy x360 15 system with the "slower" Ryzen 7 5700U by just a few percentage points.

An important factor to keep in mind for this comparison is that our fastest Ryzen 7 5700U laptop just so happens to be the largest at 15.6-inches compared to the 13.3-inch Ryzen 7 5800U laptop. A larger form factor would have almost certainly given the Ryzen 7 5800U a small performance boost, but the differences between it and the Ryzen 7 5700U would have likely still been minor regardless.