A lot of questions about the HP Elitebook 8770W

Have you tried this yet?

Have you tried a legacy OS?
Also, how is DDR3 at 1866 working out?

 

Yes, I’ve tried it, won’t work.
1866 DDR3 is working perfectly. Even 2133 is working , but not fully stable.

 

Should I go for an Alienware 980M or a MSI 980M? The Alienware is about $30 cheaper, but I don't know if there's anything I need to be aware of with this.

 

Both will work without problems on 8770W, just get the cheaper one.

 

Does anyone know what the first BIOS version with Spectre and Meltdown patches is?

I'd like to have maximum performance, and I'd like to know what versions I should avoid

Edit: F.66 Rev.A appears to be the last BIOS before January 2018, when Spectre was discovered.
Leaving a link, and a .html that you can use to confirm the MD5 of the file

http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp81001-81500/sp81416.exe

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp81001-81500/sp81416.html

Also, if these links ever die, I've archived the BIOS using archive.org. The site hates ftp://, so I was unable to archive the .html file

Edit 2: I've archived every BIOS update on archive.org