*OFFICIAL* Alienware "Graphics Amplifier" Owner's Lounge and Benchmark Thread (All 13, 15 and 17)

What do you have to do for the internal GTX to work?

 

If it interests you - check out my review of the msi gs30 - sounds like youve had a nightmare with that thing - and personally if i dropped all that coin and it didnt work id be super pissed. If i were you id demand a refund for them selling you a product that doesnt work as intended - and the fact that even once they get the right drivers - the bottlenecks on that thing. - seems wasteful of a good/expensive gpu.
The gs30 works absolutely flawlessly.
Only issue you may have with it is the lack of discrete gpu per se.
Scored over 10k in firestrike with gtx970, supports raid 0, beautiful fit and finish and getting it to work with dock couldnt have been easier. Cheers

 

Someone only got it to work temporarily, and since I don't know what laptop he has (could be a Haswell 13, which would make sense), the official drivers aren't stable enough for the GA.
I'm starting to wonder if the 347.25 driver did anything for the GA other than add 960 support.

 

I just ordered a an i7 970m 15" model, and one selling point clearly isn't working yet in the GA. Is there a list of cards that function better than others at this point? My worry is if its taking a large effort to write individual drivers for all these different GPU's, what will be the resources to keep up with new cards in the future. I really hope AW stands behind this product 100% in the next few years.

I picked this machine for the footprint, the thermals, and the ability to have this awesome dock that I could stick a premium single card, slightly gimped PCI bandwidth, beast from either AMD or Nvidia in the future and let my desktop, it's sandy bridge, ddr3, and its gtx 670, age away until building a DDR4 system sometime in the distant future. I could contine to get good use out of my Korean IPS. This GA was a big part of that plan.

 

From what I know, the GTX 780, GTX 690, and GTX 680 work fine, and AMD cards seem to work as well (someone just got a R9 295x2 to work, but I'm waiting for his response to the GA functionality). I would assume other 600 series and 700 series (aside from the GTX 760) work as well. The 900 series, though, is having problems.
Given that you have a 970m, I would hold off on the GA for a few months.

 

That's good to know. I appreciate the info. I definitely don't have immediate plans, the 970 can do 1440p good enough short term, and hopefully 1080p for the life of the laptop. Curious about some of the new AMD cards to be released over the next few months as I've been avoiding AMD for heat reasons, but in the GA, I wouldn't care as much. Any issues with heat in theGA?

 

I can't comment on heat as I don't have a GPU in my GA, but I haven't heard any issues about heat.
AMD GPUs have one special requirement, and that is that you need the Omega drivers.
The only AMD GPU with the Omega drivers I have heard that had problems was either the R9 280 or R9 280x. I think it is the 280, but I'll have to double check.

 

For those of you who have updated the GA software, go into control panel and select uninstall program. How many GA software do you see?

 

Capture by madeen2 posted Feb 14, 2015 at 7:38 AM

2 different versions for me. I did download the latest and figured the old one would have been wiped automatically. since my setup is working flawlessly i'm not touching it

 

i am sorry to disappoint you! I am that person that can confirm, that the latest nvidia driver works with the internal gtx970m (AW15, i7) and the ga (GTX980). If u dont believe me i can put up a video on youtube that proves i am right!

The only thing that doesnt work 100% is that if you plug the ga back in you need to delete the pci express root device in the device manager. But i think this is only a matter of time till it works as intended

 

Im with you. Using Dells Patch Driver here. I have not had 1 issue. I have plugged/unplugged over 50 times by now and have not had to do anything to get either my 970GTX in the GA to fire on or the 860 to take over after be disconnected. The only downfall is the patch version is 347.25 so it takes a little drop in benchmarks but other than that i am more than satisfied with the both the I7-13 and the GA.

 

hello Guys,

I'm experiencing turbo boost issues with my CPU, when the GA is connecting to my AW 15. My AW15 cpu is able to turbo boost to 3.5 GHZ and beyond when the GA is not connecting. but, if i connect the GA. My AW15 CPU will not turbo boost. the cpu only stay at 2.48GHZ. Its my understand if the GA is connecting to the AW15 the CPU suppose to overclock its self. Well its not working for me. I hope someone out here has a solution to my problem

 

Did you enable overclocking in the BIOS?

I've had two people so far tell me this. I doubt this is something unintentional.
@Alienware-L_Porras, we found a bug with the Graphics Amplifier Software. When you have the chance, could you send this information to the engineering/tech team?

 

Well, the GA has some limitations in regards to dual GPU cards. Using something like a GTX 690 or a 295x2 (which works. Odd, I know) will disable the iGPU, thus preventing you from using the laptop's screen. I assume disabling SLI/Crossfire could remove the restriction, but then you essentially paid more for a single GPU.

 

well, i was able to fix my turbo boost issues by reflashing the bios. I think the bios in my AW15 was corrupted straight out the box. i notice the fans will spin at top speed. while the laptop is setting IDle

 

That might be due to Support Assist. Disable/uninstall it.

 

Graphics Amplifier Overclocking BIOS Overclocking Question:
AW13 (I7) - The menu for overclocking when the GA is attached has 2 options when enabled:
1) Intel graphics turbo overclocking
2) Memory override support

My first question is why would one want the Intel Graphics Turbo overclocked when presumably the GA will have a desktop NVidia or AMD card?

My second question is what exactly is "memory override support"?

Thanks,
Robert

 

I have been messing around with the GA BIOS overclocking options and I have realized that I cannot get the overclocking option to stay enabled in the BIOS. Whether I have the GA attached or not, the overclocking option will not stay enabled on a BIOS save or BIOS save and reset. This is on an AW13 (i7) with the A01 BIOS. Anyone have success with keeping this BIOS option enabled?

Thanks,
Robert

 

I haven't either. I think madeen also couldn't get it to work either.
Oh, and the memory override support. That may be related to supporting RAM frequencies higher than 1600 MHz.

 

On the contrary, there's pretty much only plastic on this laptop. The entire exterior is plastic. The screen hinge is especially cheaply made. Very wobbly. Relative to prior Alienware machines, anyway.

I'm sure there's a bit of metal/carbon fiber inside it, but the exterior? Much cheaper than previous Alienware machines. Better than most competitors, but that's setting the bar low in terms of comparison.

Seriously, go into a store that sells prior Alienware models and touch it. Hold it. Pick it up. You can feel how much more solid they are.

 

Probably, they just listened to the wrong people with the wrong reactions and for the sake of the lightness. they have chosen this way. I have been using Alienware for 6 years. It was delightful. They have been solid machines. I am a IT person specialized on hardware repair like mobo, graphic cards and so on. The quality has been undeniable. Right now I am just waiting for my Alienware 17r2 and see what it is capable of. Due time I might use water cooling on it as well .

 

whats the point ? i mean the new 17 has 4gb mem, and the amp has 4gb if u go for that option, however adding the amp disables all the laptops gpu!!!!!. may as well get the laptop without any gpu's if ur going for the amp.
the only advantage i see for the amp is that in 10 years when games need more power u can just upgrade the amps gpu and thats it.

also am curious why on alienware.co.uk it shows 2 x gpu's being the same but one costs more ? anyone know why that is ? and it seems on the amp configuration u can select all the gpu's when editing the amp ? wth so thats £599 + £359 + amp really ????

 

One BIG problem with the GA is that there is only one or two desktop cards that perform better than the GTX 980M.

If you get the 970M, it will cost you at least $600 to get the GA + a desktop GTX 980. At which point it would've been cheaper to just upgrade to the GTX 980M, or get a Clevo with a GTX 980M SLI.

If you wait a few years then get the GA, it will still run you at least $600 for the GA + card. You might as well sell your laptop and buy a new one. The performance will probably be the same (or close) as to what you'd get with the GA.

The GA mostly makes sense with the AW13, as there are plenty of desktop cards more powerful than the GTX 860M.

 

I had a 780ti lying around so it mostly made sense for someone like me, especially being able to upgrade when the 1080gtx comes out instead of having to sell and purchase a whole new computer, it's actually a really logical purchase. When I go to Taiwan at the end of the year the 980M will be more than enough to keep me going.

 

What you forget is desktop gfx cards evolve much faster than the laptop ones. The radeon 300 series is coming out soon. Expect nvidia optimized maxwell at the end of this year. Within one year, the top end desktop gfx cards will be 30-50% faster than the 980m. The 1xxx mobile series will probably be rehashed or barely an improvement over 9xx.

 

Can anyone tell me does the AGA actually work properly now? I mean fully working no work around or anything stupid just working fully.

 

Depends on the GPU.
If you have a GTX 760, 960, 970, 980, or R9 280x, then not really. Maybe the TITAN is affected as well.
Otherwise, you should be good.

 

Oh now that really doesn't sound fun. I ordered the 980m so in reality on the 980gtx is worth getting

 

The GA isn't worth it if you got the GTX 980m. That GPU rivals the GTX 780/970.

 

Nice one! Hey does the AW15 overclock to 3.7GHz on all 4 cores with the GA attached or just one core?

I'm getting the AW15 soon and can't wait!!

 

I got my GA last week and the AW15 is being delivered today. Unfortunately I don't have a high end desktop gpu to test out since I'm waiting for the radeon 3xx series. I'll try to snag a high end gpu to test.

Not many people bought the GA and many that have did not provide much detail on the subtle things. Many people automatically dismiss the GA because of the 4x pcie, but gtx 980 pcie scaling benchmarks show it is negligible for most games.

Hopefully I can provide benchmarks and other info:
- Performance desktop vs egpu (internal lcd)
- Performance desktop vs egpu (external monitor)
- Performance dgpu (970m) vs egpu
- cpu overclocking/turbo boost behavior with and without egpu

 

I just fiddled a bit with the cpu overclocking options when the GA is connected. In the bios theres an option to enable cpu OC for when the GA is connected. When that is enabled, you get a slew of options that I recall off the top of my head:
-Non Turbo Flex Support
-CPU overclock profile (turbo multiplier ratios)
-Baseclock overclock

Non turbo flex is the cpu multiplier ratio when not in turbo. I didn't touch that and left it disabled. There is only one cpu overclock profile called OC lvl1. It is set to 3700mhz (single core), 3600mhz (two core), 3500mhz (3 or 4 cores). There seems to be no way to edit these ratio multiplier settings. I'm surprised there is a baseclock overclocking setting. You are allowed to change the baseclock (100mhz) by entering a new value in khz. It has the option to apply immediately or upon restart. I didn't want to fiddle with that.

I can confirm that when the GA is plugged in, I am getting the higher turbo speeds. CPU temps did seem to jump ~4-5C on full load. Perhaps it also increases the cpu voltage with this overclock. Btw, I am using bios A02.

 

Hey, that's great, thanks for that! 3.5GHz on all 4 cores is not a bad over clock at all!

I can't wait to ger this laptop myself! Cheers!

 

Anyone found a good setup for the bios overclock options...some happy medium between boosted performance and safe temps?

I have a 17 R2 running a gtx980. Best firestrike was a little under 11800 and max CPU temps were 90.

 

so i finally did the mini mod to my g.a., i had the problem that my gtx970 with the huge directcu II cooler didn't let me close the g.a. completely. now i cut out all the fins underneath the right side of the top cover (looking at it from the front of the alienhead) and then cut out a squared shape for the heatpipe (it only needs a few mm's more of clearance to be able to close). then i attached some mesh i cut to shape and voila. quick and dirty and now it closes completely ;-)
aweful part was when i found out (while using the dremel to cut into the shell of the g.a.) that it's made completely out of plastic. i somehow thought the topcover is aluminum...stupid me ;-)

 

what interface is that? whats the maximum throughput?

 

why hasnt there been any benches with this thing yet..

 

There has. On 3Dmark, you just check if the bench is from an Alienware laptop mobo and has a desktop GPU.
There are a few mentioned in this thread and the other benchmark threads.

PCI 2.0 x4 with the AW13, 3.0 x4 with the AW15 and AW 17R2.
It's a PCI cable that only has 4 lanes.

 

I am not sure if anyone has mentioned this. The dgpu is only pci-e 3.0 x8. So they took lanes from the dgpu to be used with the GA. This is unlike SLI/Xfire motherboard, where you get x16 if one gpu, or x8 for each gpu if there are 2. It is always x8 for the dgpu on the laptop. But pci-e 3.0 x8 should be more than enough bandwidth for 980m.

But they only use 4 out of the 8 spare lanes. Perhaps they lost signal integrity with 8 lane cable at 4.5 ft long, or they didnt not want to double the cable diameter.

 

Here is a quick benchmark score. I am still working on more. My system is AW15 w/ i7 4710hq.

GA + Asus gtx 980 oc edition
firestrike performance preset, all graphics scores below

notebook lcd 1080p fullscreen (screen is 4k native) ~ 12800
notebook lcd 1080p windowed mode ~ 13400
external monitor 1080p fullscreen ~ 13800

The firestrike score from ocaholic's review of the same asus card in a desktop was ~ 13500. This is likely older drivers. I would say with modern drivers, the score should be possibly ~14000 or more.

So it seems that with firestrike @1080p performance, the drop to 4x pci-e doesn't affect performance too much as evidenced with the external monitor score. When using optimus to route the display back to the notebook lcd, you see a small drop. Since my screen is 4k, if I run it 1080p fullscreen, it seems to be upscaled to 4k by the intel or nvidia gpu. Most likely it is a 4k video signal passed through optimus, so maybe why theres a bigger performance drop at fullscreen mode when using the notebook lcd.

But other programs/games may be affected more or less by the limited pci-e bandwidth and optimus.

 

Hey guys, I'm sorry that I didn't read all eight pages, I just have a few questions that I'm hoping you guys could answer:

1) When you connect the "box" to the laptop, does the laptop need to be restarted?

2) How much of a decrease in performance is there? Like, how much would a 980 hooked up this way differ in performance to a traditionally hooked up 980?

3) Is the GTX Titan X supported yet?

4) If the answer to #3 is yes, would I be able to get good performance while trying to run games on max at 5760*1080?

 

1. You can either restart or shut down (or connect it when the laptop is powered off). But it's not a very smple plug-and-play.
2. 5 to 15% depending on the laptop you have and resolution (could be worse when using the laptop as a display, but it should never be worse than 20% I would imagine at 1080p). The bigger percentage is more for the AW13 rather than the AW15 and AW17 R2.
3. Not yet.

 

Thanks for the quick reply. Any news on when the Titan X will start being supported?

 

Soon. No specific date mentioned.

 

Alright, great. One more question and it's a bit hypothetical...

Say I got the Alienware 17 with the i7-4710HQ, 970M, 16GBs of RAM, and the Graphics Amplifier. I waited until the Titan X was supported and started running that in the Amplifier...do you think I'd get good performance at 5760*1080? I don't necessarily need to max things out but it'd be nice. I don't play the newest AAA titles, things like Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite, BF3, etc.

At this point, it's either what I just said above or the MSI GT80 Titan. I just figured I'd be able to save a few bucks this way and not have to deal with the hassle of SLI.

 

You'll get good performance, but the processor might hold back the TITAN X at high FPS. Maybe with the i7-4980HQ that would be an issue, but then you have the question of if it'll beat a 980m SLI, and to me, maybe with an overclock.

 

Yeah, honestly the 13" having a dual core is the only reason I'm going for a 17". It's disappointing. Hell, I'd opt for the MSI GS30 Shadow but the GS30 is such a terrible laptop without the docking station. At least with the 17 I can play games without the box if I want to. I'd opt for the 4980HQ but then I'm not really saving money at all so I'd rather not do that. And about raw performance...yeah, I'm not sure yet. The Titan X is apparently about 75-80% of the power 2-Way SLI 980's get. The 980m SLI is about the same at around 70-75%. Or at least that's what I've been told.

 

Do we still need to download alienware's drivers for the GA or does it work with Nvidia's automatically now for 980s


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

The AW15 ability to overclock with the GA is only because it has the entire heat-sink to dissipate heat, no need to fight with the dGPU

 

I had a time getting mine to work properly...once I disconnected the GA, it wouldn't show back up again the next time I tried to use it. The steps Alienware provided (alienwarearena) did not work for me. Ironically enough, it was completely backwards. I had to use an Nvidia driver for starters. Next, they said to install the driver without the GA connected. Then shutdown, connect the GA, boot up, and it should work. I actually had to do the fresh driver install with the GA connected. I've only done 2 GA disconnects so far, so I'm not 100% sure it will hold...but so far, it's seeing both the dgpu and the 980m.

I did so many full driver uninstalls and cleanups that I can't remember off the top of my head...but I'm thinking it was the latest nvidia driver that I finally got to work properly. I'll double check that and give it a few more disconnects when I'm back home with the laptop.