Having AMD 7945HX Linux Problems? Heres How to Troubleshoot!

Okay, here’s my story about messing with my AMD 7945HX laptop and trying to get Linux working on it.

So, I got this new ASUS ROG Strix laptop, pretty sweet, right? It’s got the Ryzen 9 7945HX and an NVIDIA 4060. I wanted to dual boot it with Ubuntu, alongside Windows. Figured it would be a breeze. Boy, was I wrong.

First off, getting Ubuntu installed was a pain. I had to jump through hoops just to get the system into a standard configuration, you know, to avoid conflicts. I won’t bore you with the details of getting the installation media just right, but trust me, it was a hassle.

Once I finally got Ubuntu up and running, I started noticing weird stuff. Like, the system seemed sluggish, especially after running games or benchmarks. I did some digging, tried to monitor the power consumption with some commands I found online, like $(cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT1/current_now) $(cat … something something. That didn’t really help me figure out what was going on.

Then I stumbled upon some forum posts where people were talking about similar problems with their AMD Ryzen laptops. Turns out, it wasn’t just me! Some folks were mentioning CPU throttling issues, and others were saying their integrated AMD graphics weren’t even being detected. It was a mess. I found some other people talking about CPU power limits, so I ran a Cinebench test. It topped out at 85w, which was not what I expected.

I tried a bunch of different things, like updating the BIOS, messing with the kernel parameters, all that jazz. Nothing seemed to work. I even saw some posts about flickering screens and unsupported CPUs. It was like every corner I turned, there was a new problem.

• Tried updating BIOS
• Tried different kernel parameters
• Read a ton of forum posts
• Ran Cinebench to test CPU power limits

My Conclusion

Honestly, after all that, I’m still not sure what the root cause of the problem is. Could be drivers, could be the kernel, could be something else entirely. I’m no Linux expert, so troubleshooting this stuff is way over my head. It seems like there are a lot of compatibility issues with these new AMD chips and Linux. And it’s not even clear whether I should stick with AMD or try Intel for my next laptop. This isn’t about the performance, but the compatibility.

At this point, I’m kinda giving up. I mean, I learned a few things along the way, but it’s just not worth the headache anymore. Maybe I’ll revisit this in the future when Linux support for these chips is better. Until then, I’m sticking with Windows on this machine. It is what it is.