Lenovo Thinkpad T14s Gen3 (AMD)
10 years ago I bought a Dell XPS13 L322x ultrabook as a replacement for my white Macbook 2,1. This week I replaced the Dell with something newer: a Lenovo Thinkpad T14s Gen3 (AMD).
Reasons to replace it:
- Noticeable delays on the CPU side
- Keyboard sometimes (all too often) started scrollng down - never found out why - but it’s very annoying when trying to write code
- Too little RAM (8GB doesn’t work well with VMs)
- Abysmal battery life (I already replaced the battery)
Specifications
Dell XPS13 L322x | Lenovo Thinkpad T14s Gen3 (AMD) | |
---|---|---|
CPU | Intel Core i5-3337U | AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U |
Cores/Threads | 2/4 | 8/16 |
GPU | Intel HD4000 | AMD Radeon 680M |
RAM | 8GB | 32Gb |
SSD | 256GB | 1TB |
Screen | 13” 16:9 | 14” 16:10 |
Resolution | 1920x1080 | 1920x1200 |
Dimensions (HxWxD) | 6/18mm (front/back) x 316mm x 205mm | 16mm x 317mm x 227mm |
Weight | 1.32kg | 1.23kg |
It’s a little bit bigger, as you can see on the picture.
UEFI settings
Being the geek that I am I started poking around in the UEFI. It’s clear that this is actually a device aimed at enterprise environments ;) Option overload - and I managed to configure (read: screw up the configuration) in such a way I couldn’t get anything to boot.
Linux installation
Initial installation of Fedora 37 (KDE Spin) was remarkably painless after I managed to boot the laptop with SecureBoot enabled off of my Ventoy stick.
Hardware issues
GPU Freezes
One thing I noticed fairly quickly is that the kernel 6.1.18 (currently shipping with Fedora37) doesn’t really play nice with the AMD GPU - causing GPU resets which freezes the screen.
- https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213145
- https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/1974
- https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/2068
- https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/2443
Upgrading the kernel and drm drivers to the current rawhide fixed the crashes for me.
$ sudo dnf install fedora-repos-rawhide
$ sudo dnf upgrade --enablerepo rawhide 'mesa*drivers*' 'kernel*'
I’m going to keep an eye on the current Fedora37 kernel, and revert to stable whenever a newer kernel hits stable
(note: running rawhide is not recommended)
Power savings
As an added bonus, the kernel 6.3 (in rawhide at the moment of writing) also has support for the AMD pstate EPP driver, which gives a lot better PowerPerWatt.
To enable this, add amd_pstate=active
to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX
line in /etc/default/grub
so it reads GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rhgb quiet amd_pstate=active"
. Afterwards, run
$ sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
and reboot. You should be able to then query the state using the cpupower
tool:
$ sudo cpupower frequency-info
analyzing CPU 14:
driver: amd_pstate_epp
CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 14
CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 14
maximum transition latency: Cannot determine or is not supported.
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 4.77 GHz
available cpufreq governors: performance powersave
current policy: frequency should be within 400 MHz and 4.77 GHz.
The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
within this range.
current CPU frequency: Unable to call hardware
current CPU frequency: 2.70 GHz (asserted by call to kernel)
boost state support:
Supported: yes
Active: yes
Boost States: 0
Total States: 3
Pstate-P0: 2700MHz
Pstate-P1: 1800MHz
Pstate-P2: 1600MHz
Other ramblings
Things I absolutely love about this machine:
- Linux is a first-class OS on this device. It never felt quite so ‘at home’ on my Dell XPS13.
- The non-glossy 14” screen with a nice 16:10 aspect ratio! I opted for the 400nit lower-power non-touch screen.
- fingerprint reader built in. And it just worksTM.
- batterylife and performance
- feel and finish. It feels sturdy, it looks amazing.
Things I have to get used to:
- the keyboard. Somehow it feels like I have to type a lot harder to get the same effect. Might just be that the other keyboard was worn out after 10 years ;)
- the trackpoint. It’s just not my thing :p
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