X1 Carbon CPU frequency update | Hacker News Reader

X1 Carbon CPU frequency update

200ok.ch

41 pointspreek22 comments

I have always seen Lenovo as being quite good with Linux, but these sort of things make me wonder if I should be placing more interest in Dell once again..

Was just about to purchase a new Lenovo to run Linux on.. Can anyone recommend what they think would be a good route to take at the moment?

Any new good Lenovos or other coming out later this year?

I've used one of their lower end thinkpads (s540) and have gotten 4 years of use out of it doing Java work with vms and running a ton of things without issues on Ubuntu.

I've had next to no problems the whole time, second monitors,webcams,printers,sleeping have all worked straight out of the box.

I've flown upwards of 50 times with it during this period, dropped it, spilt water on it and it has survived it all (almost!). The only reason I'm even looking at replacements is I spilt a full litre of water on the keyboard and a few keys have died forever.

If you're looking for a good development machine I'd recommend the following ThinkPad lines:

* X range: Smallest and lightest, maxes out at 16gb ram (new X1 extreme doesn't but it is $$$$).

* P range: Most power in terms of CPU/Ram/GPU whilst being fairly portable.

* T range: IMO the sweet-spot between X and P. Portable but still with enough grunt, the T480 takes up to 32gb ram.

Another ancedote: I used a thinkpad X220 throughout grad school and absolutely loved it (except the screen resolution). This year I decided it was finally time to move on... but to what? I heard all the new thinkpads have bad keyboards, and I'm not going to buy a dell since I generally despise Dell keyboards and trackpoints.

I bought a refurb T460. Love it. The thoughts that it has a "bad" keyboard are totally overblown. This thing has a great keyboard, screen, trackpoint. The whole package is good IMO. Opting for the T460 instead of the T460s, I'm able to enjoy keys that are slightly taller, and I can use my laptop without listening to the fans spinning on very much.

I run Debian Stable and this machine is fast as hell and problem free.

Also I could not LIVE without a trackpoint. I don't know how people use touchpads it's so barbaric.

Love the X230. Been using it as my daily driver for a year. Before that I've been using X series since 2010. X40, X60, X230.

I'm starting to come around to the idea that the upcoming crop of professional / premium Chromebooks would be the best Linux devices. First, under straight Linux (Fedora, Ubuntu, etc) you are still treated as a second class citizen from a number of entities. Netflix works good on Chrome on Linux, but Hulu downgrades the resolution, and some services like Xfinity streaming choose not to work at all.

Whereas on a Chromebook, even though it is basically the Chrome browser on Linux, these other entities don't really have a choice to ignore them, due to a significant enough user base. Just like Apple forced a lot of sites to give up Flash since they didn't support it (either give up flash, or lose users).

With Android app support, that fills in a lot of missing pieces in Chrome OS, and Crostini, with full Linux distro support, will fill in the rest of the holes once it is finished (i.e., audio support, full graphics acceleration, external storage support, etc). Can't wait to see what the next crop of decent Chromebooks will be -- just bought an HP Chromebook X2, and it is really looking good so far.

I'm not sure this is Thinkpad specific. I have a Dell Latitude 7490, same generation as the X1 gen 6, and I often see "Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled", same as on my 6th gen X1 at home. And I don't push these machines, the heavy stuff run on a server. Also, the page with the fix [1] list a Dell XPS 9370. So it may just come with recent Intel based laptops.

Personally I have no problem with Linux having a more conservative thermal threshold than Windows, on the contrary I prefer it that way. The few times I ran Windows 10 on these same laptops, I got annoyed by the fans spinning when I didn't do anything substantial. I'd rather have my laptop cool and silent (and still very reasonably fast for most things) than faster on heavy loads. To each their own, but I think silence and low temperature make sense for ultra-portable PCs.

For a portable workstation maybe less so. But it's Linux, if you don't like the default it's not so difficult to change them to suit your needs.

[1] https://github.com/erpalma/lenovo-throttling-fix

Mooman called it, only took a day tho: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18080209

You could try undervolting the CPU with Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) - lowering the voltage by ~0.1V decreases the amount of heat produced, which leads to less CPU throttling.

Please correct me if I am wrong. Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) seems to be Windows only and I was unable to locate a Linux version. For Intel Haswell generation CPUs and newer I've had great success using the following utility under Linux to undervolt my Dell Precision 5510: https://github.com/tiziw/iuvolt

Any potential drawbacks?

Drop it too low and the machine may crash under heavy load, it won't (with a high degree of probability) cause any permanent issues (it's somewhat safer than over volting).

at the offchance that someone knows the answer to my problem: when undervolting everything works fine for me until I lock my PC(Windows). It then proceeds to restart itself. Am I undervolting too much or is this something else?

So does that mean that Linux is obeying the TDP specs more closely than Windows [which allowed die temp to reach 97C]?

According to the Intel link in the article the max Tjunction is 100C so Windows is pushing it closer to the max.

I'm not too sure about now (especially in this age of forced obolescence), but it used to be that Intel CPUs would automatically throttle down if they started overheating, with no software required, and AMDs would just let it burn:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSGcnRanYMM

That was a very long time ago in the early 2000's before the AMD K8 and up were introduced.

Is this only applicable for the 6th generation?

The 90s are over, surely the OS can't force the CPU into overheating.

Yeah, I think there is a lot going on with TDP, the OS, the workload, die temp, cooling, voltage rails and power profile.

Can anyone explain how CPU throttling works in real life?

I'm glad I'm not fussing with Linux on the desktop. Far too expensive.

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