Lenovo ThinkPad X13 and ThinkPad T14 powered by AMD Ryzen 4000 APUs may be around the corner

When AMD announced the Zen 2-based Ryzen 4000 APUs at CES 2020, the company announced that more than 100 laptop designs can be expected this year. Lenovo showed off their 14-inch Yoga Slim 7 at CES, but that's about the only AMD Ryzen 4000 option we've heard so far.  However, Lenovo could be working on offering Ryzen 4000 options for the traditional ThinkPads as well, if a Github listing is anything to go by.

As reported earlier, Lenovo is changing the naming convention of the ThinkPad X390 and ThinkPad T490 to the ThinkPad X13 and ThinkPad T4, respectively. We see the ThinkPad X13, ThinkPad T14, and the ThinkPad T14s as having AMD versions in the Lenovo Realtek driver release notes Github page indicating that ThinkPads powered by Ryzen 4000 aren't probably too far away from release. There's not much information about these laptops themselves or the CPU SKUs apart from the AMD naming. Interestingly, there is no mention of "AMD" for the ThinkPad T15 (erstwhile T590) model. 

Going by the news about improvements we get to see with Zen 2 Ryzen 4000, these ThinkPads, if real, could offer a viable alternative to the Intel U-series chips. In fact, the ThinkPad T495s powered by the AMD Ryzen Pro 3700U offers an excellent alternative to its Intel Core i5-8265U-based counterpart, the ThinkPad T490s, without much performance difference and at a much lower price. Expect to see a similar outcome with the upcoming AMD-powered ThinkPads as well. 

For those not in the know, the said Github page is a non-official repository for downloading Realtek audio drivers maintained by Alan Fox. This repository offers links and resources to download WHQL-certified Realtek universal audio drivers (UAD) for PCs and laptops. Although a few third-party plugins and audio enhancers are not compatible, UAD offers certain advantages over the traditional HD Audio (HDA) drivers, such as small file size, direct updates of the Realtek Audio Console app from the Microsoft Store, componentization, and anecdotally improved audio quality.

If you are still on Realtek HDA drivers, you can move to UAD as long as you are running Windows 10 x64 1809 or above. Just be sure to completely uninstall the current driver before installing UAD.