Has anyone else encountered a problem with the Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 6 (model 21QK) where a significant portion of RAM is marked as 'Hardware Reserved' in Task Manager? We are using 16GB models, but Task Manager is only reporting 11.6GB available, with 4.4GB being reserved. It seems like there's an issue with the UMA Frame Buffer Size being set to 'Auto' in the BIOS. This is happening even after updating to the latest R2XET37W 1.17 firmware.
2 Answers
We noticed that sometimes if you’ve used a 4K display or two monitors, the RAM never reallocates back to normal afterward. This issue has been around for a while now. Personally, I don't trust anything that’s set to 'auto' in BIOS. It’s safer to hard limit the VRAM, and then you can unlock it if someone starts having frame drops.
I've had similar issues with a bunch of new P14s, which are like the T14, but they come with Ryzen Pro 5 CPUs. Right out of the box, they reserve 8GB of RAM for video memory from the 16GB total. It's supposed to adjust based on usage, but I’ve never noticed it actually doing that. As a workaround, I set the UMA down to a more reasonable level since our tasks don’t require such high VRAM.
I get what you're saying. We've been using Lenovo for years too and never encountered this issue until now. I'm currently waiting for feedback from Lenovo, I'll keep this thread updated. I’d really prefer not to manually set the UMA.
Sounds like they're just trying to push us to buy more expensive RAM. But hey, that’s just my conspiracy theory! (just kidding, but seriously)