ThinkPad T14 Gen 6 (model 21QK) - "Hardware Reserved" Memory
Posted by Nervous-Equivalent@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 6 comments
Any other admins out there with a Lenovo fleet seeing the T14 Gen 6 (21QK) showing a large amount of RAM set to "Hardware Reserved" in Task Manager? We have 16GB models and Task Manager shows only 11.6GB of RAM, due to 4.4GB being "Hardware Reserved". It seems like the logic is broken for the UMA Frame Buffer Size = Auto setting in BIOS.
This is on the latest R2XET37W 1.17 firmware.
CeC-P@reddit
We saw some never go back down after 3 displays or one 4k display was plugged in one single time but never found a workaround. This was quite some time ago though. I never trust anything set to "auto." I'd just hard limit it if you can and unlock it if someone's computer starts dropping frames hard.
BirdPeckOfPower@reddit
I have a bunch of brand new P14s models (sister to T14) with AMD Ryzen Pro 5 CPUs that claimed 8GB of 16GB RAM for VRAM straight out of the box. It's supposed to scale the amount of VRAM it takes but I've never seen it do so. Driver updates did nothing. I just forced the UMA down to an acceptable amount, given none of our workflows will hit that much VRAM anyways.
Nervous-Equivalent@reddit (OP)
Yeah we've been exclusively Lenovo for years, have thousands of them in our fleet and I've never seen this before. Trying to get Lenovo to respond right now, I'll update the thread if they say anything. I would prefer not to have to hard set the UMA.
BirdPeckOfPower@reddit
Honestly, 4GB sounds like what I'm familiar with seeing on the AMD processors that do this on Auto with 16GB RAM. When I was seeing 8GB out of 16GB reserved on brand new ones, I knew my users with 50+ chrome tabs open would whine so I hard-set it, but I don't have thousands to hard-set it on like you do.
If this isn't the normal behavior for these AMD CPUs then I must be missing something, because the older Ryzen Pro laptop CPUs would claim 4GB of 16GB on auto, and I never saw it scale on its own while the system was running.
Nervous-Equivalent@reddit (OP)
I'm seeing around 1.5GB on average for the smattering of Gen 5 and older T14 and T14s AMD workstations I have around.
anonymousITCoward@reddit
Sounds like they're doing their part to force everyone into buying more over priced RAM /conspiracyTheory (/s for those who need it)