*HP EliteBook 8460p Owners Lounge!*

32 hour on battery challenge, I have the 8460w with the 2.0 and ati, 16X9.
I got the bottom battery coming, cheapest price was buy.com on ebay that I could find.
I am looking for 24 hours and I will be happy with that, I will be curious to see what he gets on the low spec config, i5, intel ssd and hp power settings...


HP 32 Hour Battery Challenge - How Long Can This EliteBook Last? : Notebooks.com

 

Has anyone upgraded processor from i5 to i7 on 8460p? Is it even something to consider, say after a couple of years when warranty runs out and CPU prices come down for the upgrade?

Will there be other components that need to be changed or is it going to be just the CPU change?

I am thinking about buying this because I see it is very upgradable. Thanks, anyone who can advise.

 

I upgraded to i7 quad. Just remove the heatsink and follow the instructions from Service Manual. Unless you are upgrading to i7 Quad there wont be much difference upgrading to a dual core i7.

 

Thanks, wyemanrn. I've just ordered one and looking forward to its arrival.

What's the most significant improvement on performance after the upgrade for you?

Do you experience any problems or hardware conflicts so far?

Thanks.

 

I heard from an Ebay seller that the 8460p with i7 quad cpu comes with 4 slots on the motherboard which allows up to 32GB DDR3 memory.

Hope that helps.

 

pretty sure, that the 8460p only has 2 slots, regardless of quad or not.

According to the ProductBulletin:

Standard
DDR3 PC3-10600 SDRAM (1333 MHz)
Two SODIMM slots supporting dual-channel memory
2 GB, 4 GB, and 8 GB SODIMMs

Maximum
Upgradeable to 16 GB with 8 GB SODIMMs in slots 1 and 2

 

More cores, less lag when you multitask. Upgrading to quad raises temperature at least 5C at idle. You fan will be noiser.

The laptop supports the CPU but if you upgrade BIOS to F.20 and beyond, Turbo Boost will not work and your quad will max out at stock speed.

 

Has anyone replaced the screen on one of these with a screen from laptopscreens.com? I know some of you sport the 16x900 screens, but my buddy has one with the 1366 screen, and trust me, it blows.

I tried reading as many posts as possible about screen replacement, but nothing that explains pros/cons yet.

Thanks

 

i got an nice corsair performance pro ssd, 128gb for this notebook. Seems to be great speed, only the 4k- write is much lower than speed of this ssd in other computers.
seq 477 read/ 330 write
4k 20 read/ 34 write
(Mbyte/s, Bios F.20)

normal 4k write is between 55- 80mbyte/s

any ideas? did someone do some benches with sata 3 solid state drive?

 

Hi! Ive done a bench with intel 520 120 GB.

The results are close to the official specs, except latency 0.20-0.3 instead of 0.08-0.09 us. The beanch was done with as-ssd. But with bios f22, the system treats a drive as sata 3gb/s and speeds drop down. Probably new F.25 again supports sata III drives. Are there any news ?

 

please post your 4k results or a screen, thanks in advance.
The Corsair Performance brings in 8460p much less 4k write than in other systems. Don`t know why, even with enabled c-states there should be something like 50mb/s. Limitation due F.20 Bios?

http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=assdcpp8460plpmause7k7p.png


F.25 disables Sata 3 6Gb/s! Do not install! Same effect as F.22
Is HP kidding us? Can't be true that they disable this feature but write in F.22 Changelog "SSD Sata 3 Support"

 

I installed F.25. But only read speed drops down. so,
Seq. read 256MB/s write 168 MB/s
4K 20MB/s 36MB/s
4K-64Thrd 135MB/s 140MB/s
Ac.time 0.19 0.29

The tech. specialist at HP told me that they use samsung 830 models. I have two ideas. The new bios supports only samsung drives, or it's just a compatibility problems.

 

You can check whether SATA3 is working by installing Intel Storage Manager. SATA3 was working till F.20 and HP disabled it since F.22. I don't have a SATA 3 SSD to test if F.25 brings back SATA3. I have reported to HP for countless of times adn it seems they are ignoring this bug.

By the way, I'm using an old Sandforce 50GB SSD with BIOS F.25. I don't think there is whitelist for BIOS and any should work.

 

thanks god I didn't update BIOS from F03 to F25 two days ago !
Is there any really upgrade or reason to change F03 to newer version (F22/F25)? I'm not going to install QM but I use Samsung 830 - 128GB. Even If I lost SATA III I wouldn't be so furious than If I lost eGPU compatibility which works perfect look!!

 

you can return from F.25 to F.20 without problems. But it`s not possible to go back to a version below F.20, thats a fact.
In my opinion, there are no features that make it worth to do an upgrade from F.03 or F.08 to the newe versions- the fan is still a little noisy and so on.
@shym_tx: Sata 2/ 300 limits at about 250MB/s so you won`t notice any difference with your ssd.
HP support says they don`t support Sata 3 for business notebooks- seems to be the reason why they disabled it in F.22 and F.25, it`s no bug for them.
Don`t know about eGPU- interesting thing but adapter is too expensive to buy without need just for fun
Stay at F.03 and you`re save

 

Does anyone know about issue that if expresscard is connected there is no sound ?

 

I'm using E-SATA Express Card and not facing any sound problem.

 

Funny enough, that I don´t have any problem at all with my Extrememory XLR8 Express 240GB 31FA (Sandforce 2281 sync NAND, SATA 6Gb/s)
Read seq 489,57 MB/s MB/s write 230,89 = 607 in AS SSD
Quite ok for c-states activated and in a laptop

as long as I don´t have to update the BIOS I´ll stick with my old one

 

what`s your 4k value in read and write?
with F.20 i can reach about 830 Points in ASSSD (Screen on top of this page).
But low 4k write because of c state is annoying, i`m still in tests with disabled LPM.

 

I wonder if any 8460p, 8460w owners here could test if their quad core CPUs can Turbo above stock clocks. Thanks.

 

Actually, i don't see any difference between sata II and sata III modes. i think that high seq. read/write speeds are usefull for data transmitions. I've made some kind of a beanch by monitoring disk usage and speeds while working with different programs (Matlab, Photoshop, CADs). Speeds rarely exceeds max values getted from 4k test and at best case 2 or 3 times grater. for intel 520 120gb 100MB/s is upper limit. Usually 1-30 MB/s. May be other programs or games gets more profit from ssd drives.

 

+1 for the above information!

 

Alright guys, need some solid advice here. I've got a choice between 8460p and probook 4430s at a local store. Here are my notes so far:
- 4430s is only $80 cheaper.
- Processor: 8460p has i5 2.3GHz; 4430s has i5 2.4 GHz (not a big difference)
- All other specs are the same; Standard options on both
- Build quality on 8460p was better. Still 4430s was decent apart from a weaker base.
- 4430s does have usb 3.0
- Screen resolution: 1366x768. I wasn't impressed at all with this resolution on 8560p that was on display. Not bright enough, looks washed out when compared to 4430s screen. Not sure I'd want one if I don't get lucky with screen quality on 8460p, which seems to vary lot going by this thread.
- Keyboard/touchpad on 8560p is awesome. Comparatively sub-par keyboard/touchpad is the only thing holding me back from buying 4430s.
- Fan noise: couldn't really tell the difference in store..

So what's your advice?
Best settings for 8560p to try in store?
Anyone successfully swap out the screen yet?

Planned upgrades on either of these:
Add 4 more gigs of RAM. SSD/HDD with ODD caddy. Extended warranty.

 

I can confirm that it is possible to change the 1366x768 screen for a 900p in the 8460p.
You just need to:
A) Buy a new screen (70 or 80$ on laptopscreens.com)
B) Buy the HD+ cable (about 20$ from HP Parts store)
C) Completely (and I mean VERY completely) disassemble the laptop to switch the cables.

All things considered, I would recommend that you get the 8460p, I had the same dilemma (the 4440s vs 8460p vs T420) a few weeks ago, and I don't regret going for the 8460p. It is well worth the price. (Note that I based my choice purely on reviews, as I did not compare the two in a store)

 

dav_jw: that's awesome! Can you provide a link to the LCD panel that you used? How is it compared to your old panel?..brightness and viewing angle-wise?

 

I bought this laptop a few months ago and its been great and have been looking at ways to get a back lit keyboard on this model, i noticed the probook 5330m has the exact same keyboard and its backlit

http://newgadgetstop.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/HP-ProBook-5330m-backlit-keyboard.jpg

is it possible to order a replacement 5330m keyboard and simply replace the 8460's board?

I'm fairly sure it'll just plug right in as its almost identical, just not too sure about the back light connector.

Anyone tried this before?

 

I performed a similar mod on an older Asus UL-series that I had.
The 8460p won't have a connector for the backlit keyboard, but on the Asus you just had to solder two thin wires to the ribbon on the keyboard and then feed them to the appropriate pins on the internal SATA connector for the power.
There is a posting on the Asus forum about doing it.
Of course this would all be at your own risk, and dependent on the keyboard fitting the 8460p.

 

Hey guys, long time since I last posted on the forum!

I got this laptop through my college, and despite the fact that I was completely intent on buying another, much faster computer for gaming (like an Alienware m14x/m17x or Asus G74sx) I really like this one. Granted, it sucks at gaming, runs most new games at basically the lowest settings, but I'm putting off my gaming hopes for now and sticking to the xbox. I use this for schoolwork and Photoshop/Illustrator/etc and it gets the job done very well indeed .

I have the config the school gives out -

i5 2520M @ 2.5GHz / 3.2 GHz turbo
Integrated Intel HD graphics (school doesn't have the 6470 option!!!)
4GB DDR3 RAM (runs @ 3GB on this stupid 32bit Win7, bottleneck issue)
320GB 7200RPM Hitachi HDD
...
you know the rest. Well, basically, this system can do much better, so I decided to go ahead and do my own little meddling around. I decided to install an SSD, 8GB ram and Win7 HomePremium 64bit for what it's worth.

[I did a test run with the 64bit version of windows, it runs noticeably faster since it actually uses all 4 gigs or ram that's already installed, as expected]

HOWEVER, the reason I came upon this thread was because I was wondering if the 8460p actually supports SATA600 (i.e. SATA III), but I didn't really find an answer to that LOL. Neither did I find answers elsewhere on the net (though I admittedly didn't search as hard as I could've). So I got hold of SiSoft Sandra and Hwinfo to help me find out if this enigma of a laptop has SATA600/SATA III support or not.

Okay, here I'd like to mention that I knew the chipset supported SATA III, but wasn't sure if HP had it enabled or not on this laptop - my reasons are perfectly sane my school had this thing running on 32bit windows, didn't have the discrete graphics option, and gave me the 1366x768 screen rather than the 1600x900 one AND IT COST MORE THAN the higher-end 8460p configs ?????? Ridiculous!!

Well let's get to the point. It took me a while, and I wasn't paying attention enough but I finally (much to my relief) found evidence that this notebook does indeed support SATA III. I'll include a screenshot here :-



I'll be getting the SSD asap and run some benchmarks to ensure that it's running at SATA III indeed, and keep you guys posted. For those of you who were/are on the fence like me about whether you could reap the full benefits of a fast SSD on this system, I hope this helps you make a decision! I'm taking the plunge - those extra seconds gained from booting / hardcore graphic design work are precious for me!

 

This notebook supports SATA III till BIOS F.20. HP disabled SATA III since F.22 and they reason they give is they never stated SATA III support in specifications.

 

I didn't know that, but I haven't updated my BIOS from the F.20 yet and if it's as you say, I think I'll keep it that way! Thanks for the info

 

interesting thing! Could be possible to perform this mod. But i wonder if 13.3 inch has same size of keyboard as our 14 inch 8460p?
Maybe the 5V- supply is included in the standard flex cable. If not, this would not be such a big problem.
But... we need to get a source for the 5330m keyboard with backlight.

guys, why don`t you read the last 2-3 pages in this thread before you ask such things. we had exactely this thing with sata-600 last week.

 

I used this panel: HP-Compaq ELITEBOOK 8460P replacement Laptop LCD Screen $59.99 Brand-new screens (never used).

From what I've read, I believe it is the exact same panel used by HP. Part number is "B140RW02 V.0".

I did not really compare the two exhaustively, but my impressions are that the 900p one has similar viewing angles and brightness, but offer slightly better contrast and colors. All things considered, it isn't that much better than the default panel, except for the resolution.

If you plan on attempting this, be aware that you need to tear the whole notebook apart in a hundred tiny pieces to replace the LVDS cable (just kidding, but have a look at the service manual before).

 

how you assess difficulty of this mod? how long does it take? is there necessary to change any cable/tape or only display? in your opinion, is it worth? (<-- I doubt it )

 

To use the 900p screen in a notebook which came with the 1366x768 display, you will need to purchase an HD+ LVDS cable (refer to the service manual for the exact part number, I believe it is called "HD+ Display cable kit"). This particular cable is available on the HP part store, for around 20$.

The display cable has "stickers" on it, so you do not need any tape.

I would not recommend attempting this "mod" if you do not know what you are in for. You will need to completely disassemble the notebook (the only thing I did not have to disassemble/remove was the motherboard...) to change the cables. If you do not have any experience in repairing notebooks, well, I suggest you get some first. However, the service manual is quite handy, and those business-grade notebooks look like they were made to have all their parts replaced at one time or another; this makes disassembling the notebook much more easier than it could have been. All in all, I recommend that you take a look at the service manual if you are unsure, and look at the details of the procedure before making your decision.

The whole procedure, including the reassembly took me the most of an afternoon, probably between 2-4 hours.

The big question now, was it worth it?
I'd say it depends on how badly you want/need the higher res display. The two panels, except for the resolution, are of comparable quality (mediocre, that is). The 900p display cost around 75$ with shipping included, the cable can be had for 20$. That's almost 100$ for 400,000 more pixels. Thinking about it that way, it cost 0,025c per pixel (that's not really helping, is it?).

In my case, I do not regret it, considering that I only paid 650$ for my Elitebook and that very few 14" notebooks came with a better resolution than the standard 1366x768, even at 1000$+. Also, it was not possible, in Canada, to customize this model unless I went with the fully-loaded version which cost over 1100$ with the default options.

 

Thanks to the folks in this forum for the advice on the f20 bios, I've now 'downgraded' from f25 to f20, on my 8460p and can confirm that my quad core i7 will still run turbo boost upto 3.4GHz from about 782mhz when idle.

It sarted off with a i5 2520m, 4GB ram and 240GB 7200rpm disk. In the last week I've replaced the memory with 2*8GB sticks, replaced the hd with a hybrid Segate Momentus XT 700GB drive - ( if you're new school or working in marketing that's a 750Gb drive !!) and finally swapped the cpu for a 2820QM (HP part# 634694-001 which I got new off ebay for only £245). So sorry, since I changed the drive before the CPU, I had already changed the BIOS, thus can't comment on i7 turbo boost with f25.

For running VMware Workstation with a couple of VMs running, I'm now quite happy with the performance. However, the graphics performance still sucks (5.3 Windows experience on the Radeon HD 6470M) and the throughput on the disk dispite being sata3 is still quite poor and the figures in the "SiSoftware Sandra Lite 2012.SP3" test show a drive score of 94.491MB/s even if the Intel RST shows it is running @ 6 Gb/s.

One 'strange' thing is that I have a Sony 32Gb memory stick (usb), which if I plugin whilst the machine is running results in the blue screen of death
I can boot with the stick in and it works fine, and I have other smaller sticks which I can plugin with no problem. I tried reinstalling the usb3 drivers again but that didn't fixit.... Anyone here seen this problem? Oh, and the stick still works fine on my Sony vaio (1st gen i7), and other HP (P3)...

 

So your i7 2820QM can turbo up even with F.20? That's funny because mine doesn't turbo even with F.20. Maybe the bios have problem recognizing my 2670QM because it's newer. Can you post some screenshot on Turbo and what is your idle temperature with 2820QM?

I sent notebook to HP for motherboard replacement. Hopefully that fixes Turbo issues. You need an SSD if you want snappier performance. Momentus XT doesn't help much.

 

Here's the output from "CPUID Hardware Monitor"


The current value shows the temp, about a minute after running the CPU tests in SiS Sandra, Min temp shows before the tests ran and the Max shows how hot the thing got during the tests.

Had fun trying to get a full on turbo out of the machine on demand with a screen shot, but here's a boosted 3.11Ghz shot from the mk1 Intel gadget



The thing here was the Intel gadget will show speeds above 2.3Ghz (stock speed) but not below, and the All CPU Meter shows speeds below but not above. So. here's the output from SiSoftware's Power Management test

 

Your temperature is pretty impressive since it's a 2820QM with full 8MB L3 cache. I wonder if you are using any laptop cooler and what is your ambient temperature?

I can barely get below 50C with my 2670QM. Did you do any modifications to the cooling system? I wonder if you can try F.25 with Turbo since you can flash back to F.20.

 

No cooler pad/fan or any modifications, did put a HS2340+ WWLAN card this morning, so it's pretty much maxed out now. It's sitting on my desk with an ambient temp of 19C/68F, it's running with wired lan, bluetooth on (for the mouse) and the GPS is running (gotta play now it's installed), also replaced the stock DVD drive this morning with a lightscribe one. Think this should of come as standard but hay ho.

Didn't even use the "Arctic Silver 5" I got for the CPU upgrade, since it was a HP part that was supplied I used the thermal paste that was in the box on both CPU and the UMA. I tend to run the HP Power Assistant with the Balanced profile, and with the following mods to the profile - Ambient light sensor on, Aero theme. I have a "Air Display Graphics Adapter" installed which extends my display onto my iPad, so with a couple of apps running (firefox, IE, Cisco SDM, Evernote and iTunes to listen to music), it states I'm currently using 47watts and the CPU meter is ticking over at only 11%, which is is lower than the i5 figures. Looking at the CPU meter this makes sense in as much as I' using the extra threads via the cores/hyperthreading and CPU clock is showing as 782Mhz to 1198Mhz whilst doing this, also this shows I have 6073MB of memory in use, but with the 16GB installed it's not swapping anything.

I'm running a backup before getting the Intel AT and the full HP security stuff all configured - as last time it did this before changing the HD and it now wants new certificates. So, I'll try and remember to test with f25 in between... But this is going to slow my HD down again.

 

Series-6 chipset Flash Descriptor modification Tool

ME Firmware 7.1.20.1119.zip

This tool appears to be able to modify various parameters of the Series-6 chipset including x2/x4 link width of pci-e ports, PLL settings, perhaps even lock/unlock extreme CPUs. Not 100% sure. Putting it out there for others to see what's possible.

NOTE: For DIY eGPU users, there's really not much value trying x2/x4 as x2 2.0 gives the same sort of performance as x1 2.0 Opt (pci-e compressed). Only real value would be for those that want to run ATiAMD cards instead. x4 2.0 is going to be possible on like 2% of systems with 4 accessible ports. Plus we have no x4 2.0 capable pci-e adapter.

If you want to try it out on your system, open up the location of fptw64.exe in command line with administrator rights and type "fptw64 -d -desc" to try to create a dumpfile with your flash descriptor data. If it does work and you edit it be very careful when you go and try to flash since you can EASILY accidentally erase your BIOS since it is stored on the same chip.

Acknowledgement: thank you to Secret Santa's delivery service for this one

 

Well just checked my old Momentus XT 500gb sata2 drive in my Sony Vaio,(an i7 720QM running @1.6Ghz/2.8Ghz turbo with 8Gb ram, sata2 interface) the same SiSoftware test returns 89.351MB/s. So compaired to the HP with a sata3 interface and a sata3 drive with double the drive cache which is returning only 94.491MB/s , I'd have to say there is a problem here, and just to add insult to injury, the original Toshiba MK2561GSYN from the HP, when placed in an external sata1 drive case returned 83.248MB/s when connected to the Vaio, but 81.223MB/s on the HP. Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit on both machines, same AV(disabled during the tests), same case, drive, cables etc...

It's almost 2am here so packing up for the night, will now do the tests again on the HP with the f25 bios in the morning..

 

If you don't need optical drive, I suggest you to get a SSD for OS drive and move the Momentus to optical drive bay as secondary storage. SSD is much faster and your system will be much snappier. HP disabled SATA 3 since F.22 but even with only SATA 2, SSD is still much faster.

 

Just had a look at a 2560p 12.5" laptop at work, not too sure if its the same as the 5330m but the 2560 keyboard is a fair bit smaller but the keys have some different markings on them

The 5330m may still sport a similar keyboard to the 8460p in size, but would really have to see it in person as i cant find any info on it

 

I have to admit that was part of the original plan when I purchased the machine. Trouble is, most of the stuff I do is either in VMs or networking/infrastructure, so I need the disk space for the Virtual Machines, which would mean ££££s for a 500gb+ SSD to actually make the VMs run any faster. Current thinking is I've spotted a couple of external 2.5" sata RAID cases, and then maybe a expresscard sata3 card. Downside to this is the external case, the cables, the deskspace, make the whole thing a lot less portable, kinda defeats the object of getting this model HP in the first place.

I wonder if anyone has got these laptops running 2 internal drives as a pair with RAID 0 striping? The intel RST should support this...

 

I just got my notebook back from HP with system board replaced. The board was preinstalled with F.08 and guess what, Turbo works again! Upgrading to F.20 and newer is a big mistake and I noticed HP pulled down F.25 from their website. Hopefully they will rectify all the problems and release a proper BIOS.

 

I tend to use my 8460p for portability as I travel a lot and want all the space I can get into this tiny body without forking out a lot of money.

I chose this machine because it has got the features to support upgradability and more storage (including SSD). I've ordered a hard drive caddy to replace the DVD optical bay and an Expresscard with 2 x USB 3.0 ports for the extra external storage when I need them whether SSDs, SATA or USB 3.0 flash drives (now getting bigger 64GB and growing).

This is how I'm heading. Will drop by again to share how it goes when I get them running.

Cheers

 

A longer post..but may be useful for some

So I ended up buying a 8460p with 1600x900 (AUO223E) screen for a decent price. So far I've been happy with performance, quietness and heat dissipation of this laptop.

The only disappointing part has been the screen. Not the brightness/contrast/color though. I felt those aspects were decent enough. BUT I found my eyes getting strained within 5 minutes of reading on that screen. If I kept at it for a couple of hours, my eyes would hurt for the next day. I remember reading a few posts stating similar issues in this thread.

I knew it wasn't the high resolution of the screen or brightness or contrast, as the mobile workstation I use at work is very similar in those aspects. Hell I've used at least 6 different screens (laptop or monitors) on a regular basis in the last 4 years of college/work, and I've never had this problem before. In fact my ophthalmologist was very impressed by the focal range of my eyes a few months ago.

I felt it the moment I setup the new 8460p and started browsing on it. I knew it was something specific to this new screen. After some researching, I came across a few forums debating about the "flicker" in the new LED backlit screens. Apparently the PWM technique used to dim these LED screens causes a flicker which becomes more pronounced when you're moving your eye too fast e.g. while reading. A detailed explanation can be found here. Scroll down to the picture where they compare text with different backlighting. CCFL backlight causes a blur which is closer to what you expect naturally. LED however causes strobing effect which some people are more sensitive to than the rest.

The theory checks out, at least for me, as all my previous screens have been CCFL backlit. I guess it just suits my body better. I've tried the solution suggested at the end of that link.
1. Increased screen brightness to max
2. Disabled ambient light sensor in BIOS
3. Unchecked "Intel power saving technology"
4. Adjusted screen brightness/contrast for easier viewing in darker ambient conditions.

After working on the laptop for a few hours last night, my eyes feel much more relaxed today. The only drawback is that you lose contrast on an already poor contrast screen (and some battery life). Which is why I'm considering returning this laptop before the window closes in 10 days. Then again I might decide to keep it as I countinue to find that all competitive laptops (even Apple) are plagued by same problems.

I cannot stress enough that this "condition" is specific to very few people. It's like allergies. Please realize that just because you're not sensitive to something doesn't mean nobody else should be too.

 

Does anyone know if its possible to remove the ati graphics and switch back to intel 3000?

 

Replace the system board with the one without ATI 6470M. IMHO, HP should have introduce graphics switching. HD 6470M is not much faster than Intel 3000 and other than Eyefinity, ATI is pretty meaningless.

 

Yes it's possible. Do that by swapping out the systemboard for the HD3000-only model.

As schematic are unavailable it might be possible for someone to study the two systemboards and figure out how to disconnect the ATI graphics and route the LVDS lines from the LCD to the iGPU. Often the systemboard maker designs the same board for both versions but leaves some 0ohm pass-thru resistors out on one board but adds it in another to connect certain tracks. Such work is for quite an advanced user.