HP EliteBook 8770w and 970M 6GB and 980M 8GB - they work!

I'm about to buy a 980M to upgrade my 8770W.
Do I need a 980M with a specific VBIOS?
Will a Dell, MSI or Clevo 980M work?
Being based on Maxwell it should work with my VGA Dreamcolor screen right?

 

Yep those should all work. You just need to make sure it's an LVDS card and not eDP.

 

We have complete upgrade kits available - check our upgrade section. GTX 9xxM cards support both LVDS and eDP LCD panels.

 

Excellent! Pretty sure I'm going to go with the 980M.
However would you recommend trying to upgrade it to a GTX 1070?

 

I have read that it's possible. You may need to make a few adjustments to the heatsink to get it to fit properly, but it should work.

 

I have exactly identical setup as you man. How did you setup your RAID 0 configuration?
Read and tried everything all day long yesterday, no result.

 

Switch your BIOS to Legacy mode, then enable RAID in the BIOS, reboot and enter the RAID configuration manager (I think it's CTRL+i) when the Option ROM window comes up. Create your RAID array in there, reboot, back in to BIOS, switch back to UEFI mode, and you should be good to go.

 

Excellent! I finally did it. Thank you so much!

One trouble tortures me - every time I close the lid the goes blank. HP brightness up/down buttons don't work. On External monitor works fine. When starting in morning - screen is blank. Only restart fixes it.

Tried to flash the 980M GTX vbios however a strange thing occurs:
nvflash says:

WARNING: Firmware image PCI Subsystem ID (1462.1140)
does not match adapter PCI Subsystem ID (103C.176C).

The laptop "thinks" I have installed K4000M (the default factory gpu).

Latest bios from HP installed, No fix. Strange and seriously incredibly annoying!

 

Anyone?

 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gMOZB2HPDJ-pEvSLUq5Pz-mx1qA9u6SD

(Link Above) Verified working driver for 8740w
Version 391.24
Windows 10 x64
Nvidia GTX 970m 6GB

Above is a link to my custom driver I used in my 8740w. It is version 391.24 and includes updated INF files for the 970m in the 8740w as well as a variety of Clevo and Alienware builds. You must disable signed driver checking in Windows 10 and it will install with no issue. I'd imagine if you add/edit a line in nvhmi.inf you can make it work for any other Elitebook depending on chipset.

Install was a complete success and I am so far happy with the results. Will be trying games and benchmarks later on tonight. So far I've observed 10-20C lower temps on both CPU and GPU surprisingly. Curious to see how that holds up after stress testing for a bit to factor in heat soak.

Below is the link to the how to PDF provided to me by my ebay seller (dsyzyl). He also provided me with nvcvi.inf and nvbli.inf modified for our needs but that did not work as I had to take the above steps to get my drivers installed. Figured it would be a good reference to link it in this thread. If you need those modified inf files download my zipped driver above and they are within the "Display.Drivers" folder.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzCUtaSqUXj9RFVTQzM1WDdXR0RXQlZkWDJPNlhWSVo4MEdZ