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

What kind of temps are you seeing? I normally get max 74C with a fan profile of 1:1.

 

aww cant seem to order asus strix gtx 1080 OC anywhere from here

 

Very nice. Thanks for posting this

 

Another benchmark for those on the fence on using the AGA.

http://imgur.com/a/dqhb2

Specs are a i7-6820HK, running at 3.9 Ghz, Gigabyte 1080 Gaming G1.

1080 is OCed with the following specs, using the included Gigabyte software (Need to download the newest version to control a 1080 in a AGA):

- Core Clock +130
- Memory Clock +500
- Power Limit +8
- No changes to Fan

The 1080 runs at roughly 65C with the cover open, 74C when the cover closed. The cover closes fine without any mods.

 

Interesting. I have same system and same card but your score is roughly 2,000 points higher than mine! My processor won't OC and my attempts to OC the G1 1080 have led to display driver crashing. I'll try with your settings.

Side note, I can't even engage OC mode with the Gigabyte software. I click on "OC Mode" under Easy Settings and it just stays on Gaming Mode. Frustrating

 

GTX 1070

MSI, ASUS, EVGA

Which should I choose guys?

 

The Gigabyte software will not work when the card is in the GA. The GA passes a "DELL" hardware ID to the comp and screws with the software reading the GPU. There is no fix at this time.

Uninstall the Gigabyte software, it is totally useless. Same issue with my 1070 G1 Gaming.

If you install GPU-Z, turn on GPU logging so it saves it to a text file. Go play a game. Look at the logs afterwards and you will see that the GPU boosts to higher clock rates than what the Gigabyte software would allow anyways. My 1070 boosts to 1962Mhz without issues. Sure, you cannot OC any further (Even with NVInspector the driver crashes) but the performance is excellent.

You can also use NVInspector to adjust the fan speed to any speed you wish or leave it on Auto. I found leaving it on Auto works just fine.

 

Install the latest NVidia driver and the latest Gigabyte software. The Extreme Gaming software was released last week and it identifies my 1080 Gaming G1 just fine.

 

Glad it works for you. Already tried this last night. Still not detecting the 1070 G1 Gaming. It actually shows the 1080 Xtreme or whatever for the graphic card thumbnail, then none of the OC settings work. YMMV, let us know and see if it works. Curious for sure.

 

I have the non-OC ASUS 1080 STRIX. With the stock PSU, does anyone know how high it can be clocked? It comes with a tiny OC (+10) in "Overclocked Mode" but I'm not sure how high it can / should be taken and I'm very fuzzy on how to use the power options.

Also- no this card is not supposed to fit, yes I had to modify my case- but it works great.

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I had to downclock a bit, so getting a peak of 2101 MHz @ 64-66C max (100% fan starting at 44C)

 

Pictures of the Strix in the GA?
What kind of mods?

 

Hi .Does anyone can help me? I have Alienware 15 and I got Radeon Nano with my Amplifier. But it does not work.Windows does not recognize Nano .While istall the drivers , screen blinking 10-15 seconds , after that I get black screen and nothing else.I was waiting 10-15 minutes , but there is black screen still. Also AlienAnaline says that external Gpu works and TechPowerUp GPU-Z sees Radeon. Do I should call Dell to get help or return Graphisc card (is brand new)?

 

Got a 1070gtx today 400£ founders édition. So far all is good! Huge performance upgrade after 8 months on the 980m

 

Are all the proper power cables connected to the card inside the GA? Please post photos of how you have everything connected and what GPUZ and Windows Device Manager show. Also, what drivers are you installing?

 

Hello there,

Since I switched to the GIGABYTE GTX 1080 G1 Gaming (OC @ +2,1Ghz with Gigybite Xtreme) - before EVGA 980ti FTW - I can feel / see the hugh difference in performance now between using the internal 4k laptop screen and my 4k external monitor at home. And yes I heard about the problematic of PCIe bandwith in this forum already - but didn't expect it to be more than 15%...

I got an Alienware 17 (from 2016 - maxed out edition) - and I was pretty happy with the performance at home with my external monitor and AGA compared to friends who also have overclocked GTX 1080 in their desktop pc.

Games like DOOM 4 were running really smooth in 4k - with maxed out settings with super stable 55-60 FPS (using a frame limiter).
Even Witcher 3 maxed out (except Hairworks + HBAO) - stable 53-60 FPS...
No obvious difference to my friends computers who had maybe 1-2 FPS more - if any...

Now since travelling and using just the 4K laptop screen with the AGA - I can't play any of these kind of games in 4K anymore - DOOM for example gives me unstable 45-55 frames and the feeling of beeing "extremly laggy / blurry - which makes gaming impossible as it gets me sick and dizzy.
And Witcher 3 is around 40-55 frames - and frames are jumping as hell...

Of course in 2,6K everything is perfectly playable maxed out - even with Vsync (which takes alot of performance in 4K for me)...

My setup: latest Nvidia driver .81
BIOS 1.2.8

Benchmark Firestrike v1.1 non-OC: around 13700 (!!!) (Laptop screen)

Benchmark Firestrike v1.1 OC @+2,1GHz: around 14300 (Laptop screen)

Benchmark with external screen follows end of next week...

Anyways - I'm not amused about the big difference in performance - when having no external monitor available... -.-

Do you GTX 1080 owners experience the same? As 13700 feels a bit low for a non-OC benchmark... If not - what could be the reason (?)

 

I have a 1070 and the 4k screen and I have the same kind of issue. I tried playing bf4 a couple times with the internal 4k screen ,and even though the fps was around 60-70, the game play seemed jittery and dizzying. I just chalked it up to the 1070 not being able to handle 4k. I don't have an external 4k screen to experiment on ,only 1440p (which runs incredibly smooth).

 

Unfortunately running the card back through your laptop is going to bottleneck the hell out of your setup. It is a great solution for what it is but definitely limited unless you haul a monitor around with you as well.

 

Yeah, you are absolutly right - understandable that there is a loss in frames and I expected it - but what about the blurry / dizzying behavouir especially in 4K gaming - (which doesn't depend on low frames rates - as this happens also with +60FPS). As I am not the only one who experiences this it seems to have something to do with the bandwith limit also... and only with 4K:

And about the bottleneck - ok - but there seems to be people (and their benchmarks) in this forum who didn't experience "that" extreme difference - according to their Firestrike Benchmarks with GTX 1080 and internal and external monitor... Also my Benchmark with external and OC is above 16 500 points - but only 14200 - 14400 with internal display and OC... thats good 2000 points difference...

Hoping for some more GTX 1080 / 1070 (internal 4K screen) benchmarks and answers

 

It's most likely a refresh rate / display lag issue you are experiencing. After playing on my 1080p monitor for awhile then going back to the laptop screen, I notice the same thing. I have the crappy 1080p panel, but it does ghost a lot. Enough where I cannot stand playing Overwatch on it. It's all a damn blur lol. You can see the amoung of lag if you play Doom and enable the Nightmare or Extreme performance stats. You can see the (dunno exact name for it) frame lag. In normal situations it should be around 5ms, but in epic battles/graphic settings turned up to max, you'll see it'll jump up to 16ms, sometimes more, sometimes less. This starts creating a mouse/keyboard input lag and a ghosting affect on the display. It's like watching a hockey game and the puck is just a blur on the screen on an old tv. It sucks. External monitor is the only way to go with this, part of the reason I never saw it worth the money to buy the 4K screen when I purchased the laptop. I know the built in graphics card couldn't pump out 4K gaming reliably and even newer video cards can't keep a solid 60FPS in games at 4K with max settings on.

It'll probably be a couple more years before I even move to 1440p gaming to be honest. I think we need to wait another generation. We're just on the cusp with the 1080 (it works better in a desktop PC btw). The GTX 1080 Titan is a whole different story but the price is redonk. Sorry, getting off topic here, but you get my point.

 

You may be right with the internal 4k screen but I will disagree with 1440p. Games look amazing at 1440p 144hz paired with my 1070.

 

I had this problem with the first AGA I bought. It didn't work with either 980ti's I bought a couple months ago even though I knew the graphics cards did indeed work. Do you have a way of testing your gpu on a desktop? I ended up just buying a new AGA and haven't had any issues since. I don't think dell will help you with the any AGA support other then "is it plugged in" . It doesn't have a service tag and a number of online retailers sell it. Maybe best trying to return the AGA through who ever you bought it from

 

Thanks for the response about that - yeah it seems to be something like a display lag / blur etc... I will check for the amount of ms again in Doom 4 - but i remember it to be high... maybe because of the higher resources needed for a 4K screen resolution... makes the screen useless for many games in 4k then, even with AGA...

EDIT: Doom 4 with Alienware 17 4k screen + 4k resolution + AGA + GTX 1080 = stable 22-23 ms -.- ... and baaad lag / screen blur...

Doom 4 with Alienware 17 4k screen + 1440p resolution + AGA + GTX 1080 = 16 ms

Yeah - with 1440p its (Witcher 3 / Doom 4 / BF4 / Fallout 4 etc) extremly smooth and super stable at max setting and everything far above +60 FPS - so its definatly the right time for that now. 4k for gaming is of course still in a very early stage - but with external screen and AGA + GTX 1080 nicely playable (most games) at 50 to +60 FPS... - Internal screen is a different topic - but for DSLR/DSR photography and videomaking its amazing... and the reason why i bought it in the end. For performance and high quality gaming on the laptop screen I can only recommend 1440p (which wasn't available as screen when I bought my Alienware 17 -.-)

Of course playing in 1440p on a 4k screen is not ideal (@sharpness)... but at half a meter distance to the screen when playing - it won't matter...

 

My Fire Strike Ultra score on my internal 4k monitor is almost exactly 5% less than the score here http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/93494-evga-geforce-gtx-1080-ftw/?page=12

My actual in-game scores suffer considerably though compared to the game tests on the same site. I'll see if I can afford a 1080 Ti in the future, but for now I'm not going to sweat it and just enjoy gaming at 4k and near max settings. Even if I can only get slightly above 30fps consistently (Rise of the Tomb Raider), that's still better than a rocky 30fps in 900p (I'm looking at you xbox one).

I don't foresee myself giving up the ability to game laying down on my couch to sit at my desk even if I do get a 10-20 fps difference with a monitor. (hey, gaming is supposed to be lazy, I just take it to the extreme).

Edit: I don't encounter any lag (playing with a PS4 controller) nor any blur or anything like that with my internal 4k screen.

 

Thanks for the info.

@ PERFORMANCE: I haven't tested Firestrike ULTRA by now - but I will buy it and test it next week. Anyway a minimum of 40 FPS in 4K is pretty much possible with all actual blockbuster games for me even with internal screen at max quality (apart from killer settings like Nvidia Hairworks etc).

@ BLUR / DISPLAY LAG at 4k gaming: When you say you didn't encounter any lag nor blur - about which games are you talking specifically? I only experienced that with DOOM 4 and BF 4 by now... (fast 1st person shooter?)

 

I'm currently playing Need for Speed in 4k with a controller and haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary.

I've just discovered a new problem (albeit very specific). I bought an EVGA so I can use the Precision XOC auto-overclock tool, but they locked it so it only works with EVGA cards. Because the 1080 is in the AGA, the program doesn't recognize my 1080 as being from EVGA. Is there any fix for this?

Edit 1: BIOS 1.2.15 is out, I haven't flashed it yet but apparently no issues with the AGA from what I've read from other members.

Edit 2: Discovered what was causing my 1080 to not work properly in a few of my games, 2 Microsoft distributables that get installed with EVGA Precision OCX. Wish I knew that a month ago lol.

 

Is anyone having any issues installing drivers? I can't install the drivers for my 980ti on nvidias website.

 

Hello guys.Now I am very happy cos I have fixed my issue with the drivers.As you know when I was trying install the drivers my screen was black , despite I wanted to install desctop drivers for Radeon Nano and it did not work.My internal graphics card is Radeon M390X . Obviously I knew I have to remove drivers for mobile graphisc card before install drivers for Nano . I have done it using control panel, but still did not work.Problem was in other place.When I checked AMD file on my HDD , there was so many previous drivers cos while I was downolading drivers every time I have not removed older one, then I deleted all of those files with the old drivers.I downoladed the newest (16.7.3) and works.That is all . I know this sounds silly but it happend.I have put this post to belive it maybe help someone. In the end I want to thank everyone on this forum . It is very good to know that if you have some problem you can go here to find help.This is great community where everyone help each other.

 

Hi

I'm getting the same card as you are, so there is no chance of closing the lid of the AGA using that GPU then?

 

What driver is everyone using? I see the Nvidia website has a 368.81 I am currently still using 368.39. I know one of new ones seemed to have some performance issues.

 

Someone please tell me what custom GTX 1070 card that can perfectly fit into the GA case? The MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X does not fit and cannot close the lid.

 

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/13588239? with my external 4k monitor and AGA + 1080 FE. So far I've been playing Overwatch and Batman arkham knight at 4k and I've been hovering around 40-60 fps on all games. Hard to go back once you've seen the beauty of 4k.

 

Sir, can you give use a benchmark of Heaven 4.0 using only the laptop's internal display with the AGA?

We really do need the reference on this so we can finally set our minds in buying an AGA.

 

Just ran 3d Mark Time Spy and got 5,829 on an AW15 R1 with GTX 1080 FE. Got 13,759 on Firestrike.

How does that compare?

 

Do you guys thing the new Titan x pascal will get bottleneck I run the internal 4K display

 

Looking at everyone else's score, mine seems to be rather low. Is it because of my slower processor (i7 4720hq)? Will setting my power profile to "High performance" have any difference on the score?

 

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/13616286? my 3d mark time spy benchmark.
6441 score with 7320 on graphics alone.

 

Is the processor bottlenecking me or am I doing something wrong? Did you OC?

 

It most likely could be your CPU, I did slightly OC my 1080 to 150+ on core and 200+ on memory with voltage to 1.15V. The temps don't exceed 74C. Also are you using an external monitor?

 

Scores above were with an external monitor. No OC.

New test with high performance turned on.

Time Spy
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/13623779

Firestrike
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/13623996

Our FPS don't seem to be very far apart which leads me to believe that it's the OC.

 

Hi All
Any tips for why 3D mark would show a message of graphics card unrecognised .I am running a 980ti within the amp with an i7 6500t . I get 13400 overall on firestrike and 17446 graphics but it stills shows this message of graphics card unrecognized? Any ideas of how to fix this. Also is it normal for the graphics amp fan to be very loud,at times i can hear it from the other room.

 

Hi guys
I have a x51 R3 and I might get AGA with the 1080, so from what I've read, the AGA 4 lanes will not bottleneck the card ?

Thanks

 

Hi there guys, have been following this thread, quiet time consuming and thanks everyone for all the wonderful information you've shared. I've created an account specifically for this thread. I'm on the edge of picking up an Alienware 17 and an AGA with a 1070. I've thought about waiting for the pascal iteration of mobile GPU's around the corner but can't wait and having the heat reduced from the Alienware laptop due to amplifier it may allow a higher overclock and or better temps for the 6820HK. I live a mobile lifestyle being a pilot, i'm in the early stages of my career so moving and working in different countries etc is quiet the norm for the next few years, hence this set up being most fitting to me. My question is, i don't want to have an external monitor, i want all my needs met through the laptop internal screen. Some people are claiming no performance hit and others claiming a bit and others claiming a huge hit using the internal screen. Why do these results have no consistency ? Is it something to do with drivers ? Also i play a lot of FPS games, has anyone been able to overclock the 17 R3 UHD monitor to a higher refresh rate? I'm content with 60hz but if anyone has been able to do so through the custom resolution profile and let me know that would be great. Also when running the internal monitor does it also mean there is a slower response time ? If you are in this scenario and play FPS games could you tell me your experiences? Lastly ....... is running a 1070 on the internal screen going to give me a similar experience to running a gtx 980 desktop because of all these limitations? I've asked a million questions so i apologise but if you could answer even one part and share your experiences that would be highly appreciative. I check on this thread at least 20 times a day so i look forward to hearing you. Thank you once again.

 

I have the 6820 hk and run a 1070. There is a bit of a hit when playing on the internal screen but it isn't something that you will notice. I haven't seen anyone on here mention getting a high refresh rate off the uhd screen. I honestly did not know that was possible. As far the 980 desktop I dont really know. Comparing simply off firestrike scores I get almost twice as good as a graphics score then a 980 running on a desktop. I do notice a slower response time when running 4k but this is the only time it is noticeable.

 

I am thinking to grab one of the 1070. Can anyone suggest which might be better in terms of performance, cooling and overclocking?
MSI 1070 Gaming X or EVGA 1070 FTW? I was looking for 1070 FTW review or benchmarks but really can't find much. Since the price is only $10 different, I am looking for the best one.
Any suggestions would be really helpfull.

 

Hi everyone i am new here and just set up my AW 17r3 (their naming scheme is a pain) i have a 980 Ti asus strix and was suffering from audio not being sync with video in anything i play or youtube, once i checked speedstep off in bios this seemed to fix it and i now get decent gaming and a score of 12k on 3dmark. however i feel i can do much more, my question is i see everyone talking about bios 1.2.2 and 1.2.8 i am on 1.2.14 but whenever i try to flash up or down any version i get a black screen then a blue one saying rom not found is there another way i should flash? some clarification would be great thanks!

 

Be careful about how tall the cards are. The 1070 ftw is 5.06" tall and you wil not be able to close the lid on your AGA. Dell says the biggest card they have tried is 10.5" × 4.37". I have heard that up to 5" tall is o.k. but not had that confirmed by anyone. I was aiming for the EVGA 1080 ftw but it is 5.06" tall as well and confirmed by someone on the forum that the lid will not close so i dropped back to SC edition for this reason.
Edit: looks like the msi card is pushing 5.5" as well so unfortunately too tall for the amp. All these new top tier cards are getting to be beastly show pieces that the amp just wasn't designed for. The good news is in most cases if you go one step down you aren't missing much in the way of performance, mostly just Aesthetics and a couple of bells and whistles here and there.
Edit 2: I have read many great reviews of the EVGA 1070 SC edition which will definitely fit in the amp.

 

I'm kinda curious if anyone has an opinion on the new Nvidia Titan X soon to be released. Do you think it would be pointless and/or bottlenecked with the current 6820HK and/or the bandwidth limitations of the AGA? I really don't want to spend $1200 on a card, but I'm thinking it might buy me some time before having to upgrade again when it comes to playing the vive.

 

Thanks for your reply mate ! Mark Spar on youtube was kind enough to record videos for me on internal vs external monitor performance with the 1070.









This will be useful to the people who intend to use the internal monitor as their sole monitor. There is a minor performance hit but everything is still well above 60 FPS !!!