CPU Frequency
Let’s start by looking at the CPU frequency. This being a laptop we are curious if it can maintain its rated boost clock on a single-core operation. We then also want to know what kind of frequency it sustains when all-cores are being used in a heavily multi-threaded application. Remember, the single-core boost is supposed to be 3.7GHz, and the base clock is 2.1GHz. Let’s hope the frequency doesn’t drop that low, but we need to find out.
All Cores
This graph above shows the processor frequency over time while running Cinebench R20 multi-threaded test. This shows the frequency of all 8 threads mapped out.
What we see here is that when Cinebench starts running its benchmark the all-core frequency seems to run between 2.8-2.9GHz. It mostly runs closer to the 2.9GHz mark in this heavy multi-threaded load. At least it isn’t dropping to the base clock, but 2.9GHz is a far cry from the rated single-core boost of 3.7GHz. Still, that’s about what you can expect when all cores are loaded to the max, around 2.8-2.9GHz from the Ryzen 5 3500U in this laptop.
Single Core
In this graph, we are showing the processor frequency over time while running Cinebench R20 single-threaded test. This shows the frequency of the 4 main cores mapped out.
What we see here is that when the benchmark starts the single-core frequency does hit the maximum boost of 3.7GHz. Technically the reported number is 3697.1MHz. This test is a success then, the CPU is definitely able to hit its 3.7GHz boost clock on a single core.
Overall both of these results are positive, especially the single-core tests which proves it can hit 3.7GHz on this laptop and is not thermally held back. In multi-threading, we lose performance. With all cores pegged we can get around 2.8GHz-2.9GHz out of the CPU.