HP EliteBook 8470p

This is a compatibility guide to running Linux with the HP EliteBook 8470p laptop. If you have the HP EliteBook 8470p and are running Linux on it please consider editing this page or adding a comment below with your compatibility details. By contributing you will help other people running this laptop or trying to make a decision on whether to buy it or not.

This page is just for discussing using Linux on the HP EliteBook 8470p. For a general discussion about this laptop you can visit the HP EliteBook 8470p page on LapWik.

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For full specifications see the HP EliteBook 8470p specifications page.

The following cards work without problems on unmodified kernel.org 3.4.7 and 3.6.2:

• Intel 6205 (802.11abgn 2×2, generic PCI ID)
• Atheros 9380 HP-branded (802.11abgn 3×3, note this card has a HP-specific PCI ID)

The laptop is also shipped with other cards, these may or may not work.

Wireless does not work with Ubuntu 12.04.1. There is a problem with the firmware which I haven't been able to correct. There are indications that it is fixed in 12.10, but I haven't tried yet.

Tested with Ubuntu 12.04 and Gentoo (rolling 2012-07).

Two different models have been tested here, one with the AMD graphics on board, the other with Intel graphics. Both works fine.

There is a small trick in getting the graphics working properly with the AMD chip on Ubuntu 12.04. After you install Ubuntu and reboot all you will get is a flashing screen. What you need to do is boot into recovery mode (via grub) and then select the option to resume a normal boot sequence. This will get the graphics working for you and lets you log into the system. From there launch the Additional Drivers program and install the AMD drivers. You now no longer need to boot into recovery mode.

The open source r600g driver works very well on this laptop.

Brightness control with the AMD graphics is broken with 3.4.4 kernel, stays at boot level and cannot be changed. (Workaround: set brightness while in bootloader.) Kernel patches exist but are not in any released kernel version.

Brightness control works fine with Intel graphics.

When booting in native EFI mode, the open source r600g driver does not work because the graphics card's AtomBIOS is disabled (since it wouldn't be needed with EFI).

When booting in either native or hybrid EFI mode, the XHCI USB 3.0 controller does not get an IRQ line assigned properly and does not work due to this. This can be worked around on recent kernels with this 3-line script, which has to be executed once per boot:


# execute with root permissions
setpci -s 00:14.0 INTERRUPT_LINE=0
echo 1 > /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/remove
echo 1 > /sys/devices/pci0000:00/pci_bus/0000:00/rescan


Note: this script also works around some suspend/resume issues as well as kicks the USB 3.0 ports from nonworking into working sometimes.

The SD card reader has a hardware bug if and only if FireWire/1394 is disabled in system setup. It issues PCI Express transactions with a source of 03:00.1 while the controller only registers on bus with functions .0 and .2. Card reader functionality is therefore broken when the IOMMU (VT-d) is enabled in BIOS and kernel. This can be worked around by either disabling the IOMMU, or enabling FireWire, or adding a driver workaround, though the latter does not exist yet.

(Background: the SD host controller is at function .1 when FireWire is enabled; the latter occupies function .0. If FireWire is disabled, the SD host controller moves up to function .0, but apparently this is not correctly implemented and leaves the PCI transaction originator ID at .1 – which will not work when the IOMMU checks it.)

With the Core i7 3520M CPU, AMD 7570M graphics, 12GB RAM, a SSD and the default 60Wh battery, the runtime is around 2 hours. Power management on the AMD GPU seems largely nonfunctional (does not cause any difference in consumption). Also, the fan does not turn off due to this (under low load, the laptop should be silent.)

A similar system with Intel graphics and 8 GB RAM, SSD and a larger 9-cell battery has recorded a runtime on an office workload of nearly 7 hours. This may be due to working brightness control and fan control when using the Intel graphics.