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 works^TM.
• 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