Which is the last/best LVDS nonUEFI MXM-A GPU?

[triturbo]

After searching quite a bit I couldn’t find definitive answer to this question. From my personal testing DELL K2100m runs fine on couple of old machines - Acer 7738G (HD+ LVDS) and HP 8570w (FHD LVDS). HP M2200 and (I’m guessing) DELL M1200 are no-go on either machine. The remaining options (which I am yet to buy) are M2000M and GTX 965m. I wasn’t able to find much about the M2000M. As for the GTX 965m someone upgraded a 8570w and mentions UEFI Native as a requirement, no mention about the display. I also asked the seller of the GTX 965m and he said UEFI and eDP are obligatory. I find it odd since the GTX 980m runs fine on older machines without UEFI and with LVDS screens, but yeah it’s different GPU with different vBIOS. I need it for a project and I want the most performance out of a 50W GPU. Thanks!

 

EDIT: Haven’t explored much the AMDs as there’s even less info about them. Suggestions are welcome however. 

[triturbo]

Today I’ve tested M2000m out of Precision 7510 - no luck. The backlight came on, but I guess that doesn’t mean much as the control for it might be the same between LVDS and eDP. No picture. 
 

So far it seems that the answer to my question is - DELL K2100m. 
 

Still researching that GTX 965m. So far it seems like it is a custom board, as I can’t find which Clevo it came from. Either they (GTX 965m) are soldered or MXM-B, no MXM-A. 

[Aaron44126]

M2000M "should" work. I can personally confirm that I used a M5000M in a Dell Precision M6700 with LVDS panel, and it worked fine, even with Optimus disabled (GPU connected directly to the display panel). I believe back then there were people putting M2000M and even M2200 into a Precision M4700 and getting it to work without much hassle.

 

Not clear to me which system you are trying to put the GPU into (you mentioned both Acer and HP?). I also believe that HP systems of the day had a GPU whitelist in the BIOS, so they might be more picky with such upgrades.

[triturbo]

40 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

Not clear to me which system you are trying to put the GPU into (you mentioned both Acer and HP?). I also believe that HP systems of the day had a GPU whitelist in the BIOS, so they might be more picky with such upgrades.

It’s for a machine I’m yet to do a mod for. That’s why I’m looking for “this must work”, rather than “this should work”. (I know that with MXM there’s no such thing as “must” until you try it, but at least to be as sure as possible)
 

Whatever info I found about M2200 suggests Optimus is a must. M2000m was less explored (at least I didn’t found much about it), so I decided to give it a shot as well. 
 

M5000m/GTX 980m do work with LVDS, that’s why I find it strange that the smaller siblings don’t. 
 

EDIT: As for the HP black/whitelist it is hit or miss, 8570w was confirmed working with quite a few GPUs, but most newer ones require DreamColor display to work. 

[gluon]

On 8/10/2025 at 4:35 PM, Aaron44126 said:

I also believe that HP systems of the day had a GPU whitelist in the BIOS, so they might be more picky with such upgrades.

Those whitelists get mentioned a lot. They are said to be in all HP notebooks up to 2011 (most in 2012). After transitioning to Haswell, they became rare (15-AC/AE, ZBook 14u G5).

 

However, all of the above are WLAN card whitelists. The impression I'm getting is that these (actual) whitelists have since been mistaken for MXM whitelists.

 

So yeah, the 8570W likely has a whitelist, but it should leave the GPU alone. 

[GuitarG]

1 hour ago, gluon said:

So yeah, the 8570W likely has a whitelist, but it should leave the GPU alone. 

After F40 or F41 bios update no more WLAN whitelist on 8570w. Latest is F71. Only WAN card is whitelisted. Only known (for me) MXM gpu whitelist are in lenovo thinkpads workstations.

[Aaron44126]

There was also something going on with HP including the GPU vBIOS in the system BIOS, rather than on a chip on the MXM card as is typical... I don't remember for what years they were doing this. That could also throw a wrench in if you were trying to use an "unsupported" GPU.