Lenovo Thinkpad T14s Gen3 AMD

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tlmiller
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Lenovo Thinkpad T14s Gen3 AMD

Post by tlmiller »

So, it arrived. It's very thin, very light. First impression was..."this is junk".

First boot. Lenovo Logo, black screen...that's it.
Hard power off.
Power on.
45 seconds to POST, then loads windows correctly. Verify all the hardware and that Windows is activated. Shutdown.
Boot into BIOS setup. Change all the things that like to change, save.
Goes into an automated BIOS Recovery. Takes ~5 minutes.
Verify no settings I changed were changed by that.
In goes the USB, boot to EndeavourOS live.
From that point on, it's been great so far. But WOW was this an AWFUL first impression.

This uses the Qualcomm QCNFA765 wifi/BT. I'm hoping these become available to purchase, as so far it seems to work REALLY well. And it would be great to upgrade the older Intel AX200's to the ACNFA765 since it's Wifi 6e. But so far, while I find lots of posts about laptops using it, I cannot find them for sale anywhere as upgrade cards.
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crosscourt
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Re: Lenovo Thinkpad T14s Gen3 AMD

Post by crosscourt »

My overall experience with Lenovo over the years hasnt been good, particularly in regards to Linux. Ive used some recent Lenovo laptops that friends use and a few at stores and typically there have been issues. In my case bios issues were the most common, followed by hardware and overheating issues.
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tlmiller
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Re: Lenovo Thinkpad T14s Gen3 AMD

Post by tlmiller »

Well so far everything I've tested works perfectly in Endeavour. Wifi, bluetooth, sound. I haven't tested if it goes to sleep properly, and I haven't tested the RX680M in gaming which is something I'm interested in given it's 12 cores of RDNA2, compared to it's immediate predecessor which was only 8 cores of Vega. It definitely seems like it's running fine now, but that initial couple of boots was HORRID. The thing is literally as small and light as the K14 though, although a little deeper, it's a little skinnier (due to 16:10 ratio instead of 16:9). LCD isn't BAD, although it's not as good as my other T14's. It's too bad they decided to offer the ONLY R7 w/ 32GB ram right now with this lower end LCD instead of the low power 400-nit one.
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tlmiller
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Re: Lenovo Thinkpad T14s Gen3 AMD

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So I've got everything set up on it. Runs REALLY well, have even tested sleep successfully. Still haven't tested gaming, but that'll change shortly, as Steam is downloading my games as I type. Despite being a U-class CPU, the Geekbench scores aren't insanely far from rivaling my 65-watt DESKTOP 3700x processor. Beats it soundly in single threaded scores, but it does lose by a little in multi-thread. Still, that's some insane level of processing for a 15-watt CPU.
The keyboard on this thing is, for a low travel keyboard, one of the best keyboards I've used in a while. Much firmer feel to the keys than the last few generations of Thinkpads. Not as much travel, but feels really good with how well they jump back up.
The Wireless works absolutely fantastic. I REALLY wish these chips were available for retail purchase, they'd make fantastic upgrades for my AX200's.
Ultimately, despite LOTS of issues at the start, it's now running REALLY nicely, and the performance is astounding for what it is. I'm happy with it, even though it was insanely expensive.
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tlmiller
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Re: Lenovo Thinkpad T14s Gen3 AMD

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Ok, gaming fails utterly so far on Steam. Every game launches and crashes. Tried with the default graphics driver (modesetting), and I did force the TRUE amdgpu driver as well. Bit confused on that as to why Steam hates it so much. Although it is flatpak install of Steam.
Otherwise, it's running amazingly well (doubly when you consider how utterly crap it was the first few boots), and after doing GeekBench benchmarks, is a surprisingly powerful machine. It totally CRUSHES the scores from my T14 G2A which is still also Zen 3 cores. Single and Multi-threaded. Really shocked me.
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tlmiller
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Re: Lenovo Thinkpad T14s Gen3 AMD

Post by tlmiller »

I had been reading that the Samsung PM9A1 that was in my laptop was a pretty unimpressive SSD. After doing benchmarks, I've gotta say it impresses me. Easily hit decent pcie 4.0 speeds...
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crosscourt
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Re: Lenovo Thinkpad T14s Gen3 AMD

Post by crosscourt »

Those are great numbers.
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