HP EliteBook 8540w - GPU upgrade

hi all, I want to upgrade nvidia quadro FX880M to something better, I know that officially supported GPU is FX1800M, so how much better is it compared to FX880M ?

and is this notebook compatible with AMD FirePro M4000 ? (form factor is the same as FX880M)
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Chea...-Mobile-Workstation-DDR5-1GB/32438850390.html

thanks for answers

 

I have a Dell Precision m4500 with the FX1800M. The other card offered with my laptop was the 880M, but the differences according to benchmarks between the two are not that significant.

FX880M:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-Quadro-FX-880M.24735.0.html

FX1800M:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-Quadro-FX-1800M.26544.0.html

The m4000 however is a much faster card than the FX880M and FX1800M and will be huge increase from those models:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-FirePro-M4000.77893.0.html

The m4000 was offered on the 8570W model so it may or may not be compatible with the 8540W. It seems sellers are selling it as compatible with the 8540w so it may be just plug and play. You should only need to download the drivers from HP's site from the 8570W support page or you can try using regular AMD Radeon 7000 series drivers directly from AMD. They won't be certified workstation drivers, but they should work. The m4000 is similar to the Radeon 7770m.

 

I dont have the M4000 now, I will buy it only if someone confirm that it it working in 8540w

 

If it's a DELL GPU, it might work, but if it's an HP - might not. Why? HP started to do some shenanigans and remove the vBIOS chip from the MXM board (on some models) and put the vBIOS in the system BIOS. This way the GPU is a non-working one if used in anything different than the laptop it was designed for, or you have solder preflashed vBIOS chip on it to make it working. So, get the DELL, it's more likely to work, but not 100% guaranteed.

 

every dell GPU has dedicated vBIOS on MXM board?

 

Yup every Dell MXM laptop has the vBIOS on the MXM board!

 

is there anyone that put dell GPU into 8540w and it worked? because many people says that this laptop supports only Nvidia NVS 5100, FX880M, FX1800M and ATI FirePro M5800.
I want something better for gaming
first when I got that laptop I thought that if it has MXM slot, then it could be upgraded to any MXM card that has the same form factor

this is vBIOS chip on AMD M4000?

 

added card images

 

Exactly what I meant. Get the DELL one and pray that it would work

 

I don't have Money to throw away I want to know if it will 100% work or not, otherwise I will try to get M5800 (best officially supported GPU)

 

So, have you ordered the 'guaranteed to work' M5800 yet?

 

With MXM upgrades, unless someone has tried the particular laptop + GPU combo, there's no way to tell with 100% certainty. So take your chances and shoot. The M5800 would work, 8540w was shipped with it after all. Just make sure to get the HP version for 100% compatibility. There are also newer GPUs, but of course, much more expensive - M5100 and W5170M (which is not that much faster than the M5100), and again - questionable compatibility. Just for your information.

 

haven't ordered it yet but why it shouldn't work? it's officially supported

 

That's the point: you want a 'guaranteed' solution.

So, go ahead and order if you don't feel like being a pioneer that might fail or succeed at the whims of luck and chance.

 

why someone say that M5800 require different heatsink? they look same

and so M5800 will 100% work? I want graphics card for gaming

 

Sorry, not my dept.

 

Playing it safe wont get you a lot of FPS, but it will get you some, instead of a black screen LOL It's up to you really, but the M5800 is equal to Mobility 5730, which is like 5 year old mid-range... not really your gaming GPU of choice. As for the rest:

M5950 = 6770m
M4000 = 7770m
M5100 = 8870m
W5170m = R9 M370X

Oh and gaming on a budget is hard and even more so on a laptop - expensive parts (for same, or less performance than desktop), questionable compatibility. Not a cheap hobby! Good luck!

 

compatibility is the biggest problem if someone there could confirm that some unofficialy supported card works it would be great (that M4000 has good price - similar to M5800) but nobody tried if it works in 8540w

 

I found video where quadro 2000M works


this is that card
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-EliteBoo...220711?hash=item1c5f41a067:g:y30AAOSwGzlTv27h

 

This is like confirmation that it should run any other MXM-A GPU.

 

not any this one is not working, why?


btw FX880M has 35W TDP and Q 2000M has 55W, will be 120W power supply and cooling enough?

and what modifications is he making to drivers?

 

I think 120W will be fine. What kind of CPU are you running?

 

i5 560M

 

I have one of those. Without the integrated graphics the tdp is 25W, and with the integrated graphics it's 35W. Add 55W for the GPU and you have at least 30W to spare for the motherboard and other components so you should be fine. TDP is more or less an average so the power these components draw could be less or more than their TDP rating, depending on their use. If you want you can always get a bigger power adapter but I doubt you'll need one with that setup. Also, power supplies often provide a bit more power than their stated rating, but will get hotter if they are constantly pushed past their boundaries.

Just to give you an idea, my Precision m4500 came stock with a 130W power supply and an i7 920xm (55W TDP) and the Quadro 1800m (45W TDP).

 

It looks like a defective GPU to me. If it was incompatible, it would've blinked the lights a few times giving you a GPU error code. This is from my experience with 8740w after a handful of GPU tests. Might differ for 8540w, after all it's s different system, even though they are same generation. Not sure about the manufacturer of 8540w, the 8740w is made by Inventec (code name Armani).

A quick Google says it's Compal, code name: Versace, so yeah, different manufacturer. It still acts odd, that's for sure.

 

I think I will get M5800 first and some time later I will try Q2000M

 

just got M5800, 7400 points in 3DMark 06 (FX880M got 6200 points)
now, what is the best MXM card that 8540w can accept (AMD or nvidia, whatever)? I read that it doesn't accept Kepler based nvidia cards, only fermi based ones
is it quadro 2000M ? or is there something better?
I also plan to upgrade CPU to i7 640M (best dual core for 8540w)

 

M5100. Get the DELL one, you have the best chances for compatibility with it. Good luck!

 

and something from nvidia? (pre-kepler)

 

I don't know if anyone's still interested in upgrading the 8540w, but I'll post what I've found here on the off chance that someone is.

The user that posted the above video has a number of other videos of testing graphics cards in various laptops here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0845QgMjxIvNs63-brZiVA/videos.
including a quadro K1100m, Firepro M5100 and Firepro M4000. None of them work. I have a Firepro M5950 and I can confirm that it works, but that's only about as powerful as the Quadro 2000m (although the TDP is 35w instead of 55w.) So it looks like there aren't any newer video cards that will work in this machine.

A few notes: The M5950 is a card pulled from a Dell machine with the original vBIOS file. The X-bracket is much thicker than the one on the M5800 that my machine came with, and as a consequence the card can't be screwed all the way in (attempting to do so will cause the card to bend.) In order to properly install it, the X-brackets will have to be swapped - a project for another day. (It's possible to secure the heatsink to the card but I suspect that it would interfere with the keyboard if I tried to put it back on.) I don't know how good compatibility is inside of the OS or if there are any other issues. All that's been confirmed is that the M5950 can display video outside of the operating system.

 

I'm sorry to ask questions to an old post, I currently have a 8540w with an FX1800M, I would like to upgrade the gpu, as far I can see the 2 options are: Quadro 2000M and Firepro M9590. I choose to go with the firepro as it consumes less power and it's not so far behind the 2000M, my questions are will any card manufacturer work? I see that there are problems with bioses.

- You have used a Dell one probably from a M4600 right?
- Can you please give me the Vbios version?
- Which bios version are you using on the 8540w?
- Any information other than showing the HP logo in the beginning?

Thanks in advance, your time will help me

If I can confirm that we have the same bios on the machine and the gpu comes from a M4600 this one should work right? http://www.ebay.it/itm/NEW-Dell-Pre...398135?hash=item1a2be24277:g:swsAAOSw3gJZFjAd

 

May be a W5170M (3.0a https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/2705/firepro-w5170m) could be compatible



because someone upgrade a 8740w with W7170m http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...od-gpu-upgrade-cooling-and-etc.780243/page-11

 

The 8740w is quite different from the 8540w, I need people with the same machine (possibly same bios) that can test these things for me, as for now i'm just a student that tried to squeeze the last bit of this machine
I saw a video of a guy running a quadro 2000m without any issue, just the VRM heatsink wasn't covering the entire board but is not an issue, tho the firepro uses 35w vs the 55w of the quadro and 45w of the actual fx1800m. But again the only real proof that this gpu can run in this machine is this guy here.
Still thanks for your help!

 

W5170m is definitely not compatible, I tried to put it in an M4600 and it couldn't run the internal display because it didn't support LVDS, only eDP. Unless the Dreamcolor 8540w is eDP you're out of luck there, and even if it is I give it <10% chance of working given that the m5100 and m4000 didn't work.

I used an M5950 out of a M4600. I don't remember the vBIOS version (although I don't think that's typically a compatibility issue as long as it's the right brand, and I'm not sure that even brand is that important...) I think I was able to boot into the OS with it, but it was a brief experiment a while ago, so I don't remember very much. I do remember that it seemed that it was plug-and-play and required very minimal tweaking.

 

No dreamcolor here, maybe it uses the eDP being 10 bit right? Anyway I would like to try the M5950, the ebay link I sent can be good?
It's a gpu for the m4600 ofc Dell like yours, can u tell me which bios are u running on the 8540w, even a screenshot of the bios menu where it tells pratically everything it's fine. I know i'm asking too much but I need this machine to be up to the task next month for school and with those huge shipping time to Italy it gets harder. Thx (u know better safe than sorry)

 

I actually sold the laptop a while ago, sorry. I can't test anything - all I have is what I remember, and that's not a lot. The Ebay link looks like it should be fine, but again, I don't remember enough of the specifics to say for sure. All I can recommend is to choose one that has a good return policy and then just go for it.

 

Oh didn't know you gave it away, anyway I'll get that gpu tomorrow probably and hope for the best, return policies might be useless and I'll end up paying more for shipment than what I paid so... anyone here wants a m5950 if I cant get it working? Just joking as far as heatsink mount had any issue? Currently i'm running the fx1800m voltmodded [email protected]

 

I think the only issue with mechanical compatibility was the differences in the x bracket thickness. As I recall figuring out thermal pads etc was pretty straightforward. You should be aware that my 8540w had an AMD card to begin with, though. According to the manual there are three different heatsinks, one for the fx1800 (part number 595766-001), one for the fx880/nvs5100, and one for the firepro m5800 (595768-001). From what I can tell looking at photos on eBay they look the same but it might be a good idea to do attritional research to confirm.

 

If it were me I'd just risk it but I don't know how short on cash you are. Regardless I don't think I can offer you any more information given that I don't have the laptop anymore.

 

I'll probably risk it, it's going to cost around 60 euro all done so it's not that much, atm I'm coming home after a travel so it's hard to do research with my phone but if heatsinks don't match i guess i'll use a bit of creativity

 

Sounds good. Good luck!

 

Finally at home for a brief moment, I gave a quick look to the heatsinks but I cannot spot any differences! I'll try to overlap the 2 images of the gpus (1800m and M5800) to see if there is something like the position of the entire block (not the distance between screw holes) when I'll be back from dinner somewhere..there's nothing worse than coming home after a while and find the fridge empty
Only if u have some free time I would like to see if you can also find differences, I'll be back within a few hours, let's see who's the fastest.