AMD's rumored Ryzen 4000 (codename Renoir) refresh looks more legit by the minute as new Ryzen 5000 (codename Lucienne) parts are popping up. Apart from the Ryzen 7 5700U, the Ryzen 5 5500U is the second member of the Lucienne family to make an appearance.
The Ryzen 5 5500U meets all the requirements of a rewarmed Renoir chip. The mobile APU reportedly comes equipped with six cores, 12 threads, and 8MB of L3 cache. We expect to see Zen 2 cores and Vega graphics as usual. Geekbench 5 detected the Ryzen 5 5500U with a 2.1 GHz base clock and a 4.04 GHz boost clock. If you look closely at AMD's Ryzen 4000 U-series product stack, the specifications are identical to those of the Ryzen 5 4600U. It might not be a simple coincidence, but the Ryzen 5 5500U is actually a mere rebrand of the Ryzen 5 4600U.
The multiple Ryzen 5 5500U submissions (via Tum_Apisak) have one thing in common - the mysterious TIMI Laptop. It's an unknown device, and the cooling capacity is also a mystery. However, we can't overlook the likelihood of the laptop's cooling solution holding back the Ryzen 5 5500U, which could explain the similar clock speeds with the Ryzen 5 4600U.
AMD Ryzen 5000 Lucienne Specifications
| Processor | Cores / Threads | Base Clock (GHz) | Boost Clock (GHz) | L3 Cache (MB) | Compute Units | Graphics Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryzen 7 5700U | 8 / 16 | 1.8 | 4.3 | 8 | 8 | 1,900 |
| Ryzen 7 4800U | 8 / 16 | 1.8 | 4.2 | 8 | 8 | 1,750 |
| Ryzen 5 5500U | 6 / 12 | 2.1 | 4.0 | 8 | ? | ? |
| Ryzen 5 4600U | 6 / 12 | 2.1 | 4.0 | 8 | 6 | 1500 |
The Ryzen 5 5500U performed erratically in Geekbench 5. As of right now, there are eight total submissions with different scores. The best entry has the Ryzen 5 5500U putting up single-and multi-scores of 1,133 points and 5,881 points, respectively. On the other hand, there is an excess of Ryzen 5 4600U submissions to pick from. Unfortunately, it'll take ages to go through them all, but one of the better Ryzen 5 4600U submissions shows the hexa-core chip with a single-and multi-score of 1,087 points and 5,844 points, respectively.
The Ryzen 5 5500U was 4.2% faster than the Ryzen 5 4600U in single-core performance. The multi-core performance margin was even lower. The Ryzen 5 5500U only outperformed the Ryzen 5 4600U by 0.6%, lending credence to our rebranding theory.
Unfortunately, the Ryzen 5 5500U's iGPU wasn't put through the paces. The APU will likely come with six Vega Compute Units (CUs), the same configuration which resides inside the Ryzen 5 4600U. Without a proper benchmark, we won't know if AMD finetuned the graphics frequency or not. For reference, the Ryzen 7 5700U emerged with an 8.6% higher graphics frequency than the Ryzen 7 4800U. At this particular moment, it's uncertain if the Ryzen 5 5500U will receive the same treatment.