Dell Pro 5 16 (AMD) Laptop Performance
Under the hood, our Dell Pro 5 16 (AMD) review sample runs on an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 470 processor, part of the Ryzen AI PRO family. This is AMD’s premier mobile-focused and mid-power silicon, offering 12 CPU cores in total along with the company’s most powerful Radeon 890M integrated graphics (RDNA 3.5 architecture) and a modest number of PCIe Gen4 lanes for additional expansion.
As a full-fat version of the Gorgon Point chip, the 470 gets access to all the hardware offered in Gorgon Point, with four performance Zen 5 cores topping out at 5.2GHz. Meanwhile, backing the Zen 5 cores for highly threaded (and very light) workloads is a further eight Zen 5c cores, which top out at 3.3GHz.
True to their name, the Ryzen AI 400 family also features an NPU on all of the SKUs. The 470 gets a 55 TOPS NPU, which is a bit faster than most of the SKUs and is ahead of Microsoft’s Copilot requirements.
All told, Dell offers a wide range of CPU options for this laptop. The Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 470 is the top CPU configuration (surprisingly, Dell does not offer the top-bin 475), while the lower-end configurations extend down to AMD’s 6 CPU core Ryzen AI 5 PRO 435.
Regardless of the specific CPU SKU, all Dell Pro 5 16 (AMD) laptops come with DDR5 SO-DIMM memory.
Geekbench 6
For our look at system performance, we will be comparing the Dell Pro 5 16 (AMD) to the Intel-based Dell Pro 5 14 system that we looked at a couple of weeks back. Both systems are aimed at the same mainstream business segment of the market, but are based on AMD and Intel’s latest platforms, respectively. This will give us a chance to see how the two of them compare in a close-to-apples-to-apples setup.
First up, we have Geekbench 6’s single-core test, where we find the two Dell systems within a stone’s throw of each other. At a score of 2950, the Dell Pro 5 16 (AMD) is right about where we expected it to land based on the other Ryzen AI 300/400 systems we have reviewed. And for AMD, it offers a point of bragging rights, as the system comes in just a smidge ahead of Intel’s latest mobile chip.
Meanwhile, the multi-core score finds the AMD-based system trailing in performance. 12 CPU cores means that the Ryzen AI 9 PRO 470 is no slouch, but when 8 of those cores are also capped at 3.3GHz, it limits just how far the chip can stretch in multi-core workloads. This is a test where the relative age of AMD’s current mobile platform – which is essentially a recycled version of their 2025 Strix Point platform – begins to be felt. It is fast, but it is not fast enough to beat Intel’s newer hardware.
Geekbench 7
We are also phasing in Geekbench 7 as part of our testing suite, following the launch of the latest version of the benchmark suite last month. As a result, this is the first time we have run GB7 on a Gorgon Point CPU.
One of the more fascinating (and unexpected) aspects of Geekbench 7 is that the score has gone up from generation to generation. Not that the scores are meant to be comparable in the first place, but it does throw one for a loop the first time they see it.
In any case, the two Dell systems are even closer under Geekbench 7 than they were 6. The 0.5% difference is well within the run-to-run score variation of the benchmark, leaving the two systems virtually tied here.
Meanwhile, with the multi-core score, we are once again back to the Dell Pro 5 16 (AMD) system in the trailing position. In fact, it is a bit of a wider lead than Geekbench 6 multi-core, reflecting the slight gains we saw the Intel system make in the single-core scores.
MLPerf 1.6.1
We ran MLPerf Client v1.6.1 on the system as well, giving us a look at a full spectrum of GPU and NPU performance.
The Radeon 890M iGPU fares well here, given the circumstances. While even AMD’s best low-power mobile iGPU is not going to put up the same kind of numbers as a discrete GPU, it puts up a fight overall, providing better than 25 tokens-per-second with Phi 3.5. Though with the heavier Phi 4 reasoning model, it dips below 10 tokens per second, illustrating the limits of the hardware.
Meanwhile, taking a look at the NPU, it is somewhat surprising that performance is as close as they are. The iGPU is still well in the lead, but the far more efficient NPU is delivering around 65% of the GPU’s performance in Llama 3.1 and Phi 3.5. For use cases where the 10+ tokens-per-second rate is acceptable, this makes the NPU a very viable option to using the GPU here.
Dell… best comp