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

Oh wow, guess USB-C isn't an automatic indicator of performance. The Alienware rep I spoke to on FB said a new Nvidia driver will be released on the 15th. I also sent an Nvidia rep a bunch of install logs, so I'll keep everyone up to date on whether that solves anything, and what the performance is like vs. the 1080.

(Pretty happy how this pic turned out)

 

Very pretty!

 

I'm hoping someone here can help me out because Dell support is useless. I've been combing through forums and faqs for days now and nothing seems to work.

I bought a EVGA 1070 SC and put it into the Alienware GA for my new 13R2. The GA powers up and my laptop prompts me to restart over and over and the 1070 never shows up in the device manager.

I downloaded the latest nvidia drivers but nothing changed. Does anyone have any ideas? Dell support told me to just keep letting it restart. After 2 hours I hung up with them feeling stupid for letting them convince me to restart my laptop over and over for 2 hours.

 

Make sure the power connectors to the 1070 are plugged in right. I've made this goof before, but if that's all correct, try this:

Unplug the AGA, Make sure you have the latest Dell BIOS (12.1.15). Ddownload the DDU tool, run it and boot it into safe mode to uninstall all nvidia drivers. Reboot with the AGA still unplugged, download the latest appropriate mobile drivers for your laptop GPU and install. Reboot. Then shut down. Plug in your AGA and boot up again. Install the latest 1070 drivers (don't do a clean install), reboot and see if that works.

If that doesn't work, unplug the AGA, use DDU to uninstall again, do the laptop GPU first, power off. Plug AGA in, install 1070 drivers using clean install this time and reboot again.

Also, go to intel's site to download the latest driver for the integrated Intel graphics chip.

 

Thanks for the reply Intotheblue. I'm going to try those steps tomorrow as I'm exhausted and frustrated enough that I'll surely F$&@ it up royally if I try it tonight.

I'll post an update with results once I've tried it.

 

I know the feeling, I got a 1080 the day it came out and couldn't get it to work for a while. And my Titan X won't work now. But rest assured, it should eventually work for you as 1070/80's seem to work no problem for most.

I would download MSI Afterburner for your overclocking needs instead of EVGA Precision OCX as an added note. One of the drivers or whatever that gets installed with Precision was preventing me from playing my most current games without a DirectX crash.

 

Hello peeps! Just got me an amp and a gtx 1080 fe card (msi), the benchmarks, games and even sometimes at idle the display goes unresponsive and recovers, like Constantly. I have the latest 970m drivers and tried with and without the desktop drivers.. It still wont play nice! Anyone else have any input or things ican try? Madness that some peeps have it working and others dont

 

Okay, so now that I have a moment to look at your post with a clearer head; I'm running down a mental checklist of what to do tonight:

1. I think the power to the 1070 is good because the led lights and the fans on the card itself come on when I power up the laptop. The screws and hdmi outputs lined up perfectly as well so I'm thinking it's sitting correctly in the amp.

2. I'll check the Dell Bios to make sure it's the correct version (12.1.15) when I get home from work tonight.

3. I did a quick look into the latest drivers for my GeForce 965M and the new 1070 I'm trying to introduce via the amp and both searches point to the GeForce Game Ready Driver - WHQL version: 368.81. Is this a universal driver for both GPU's? If so, should I still install it twice (one clean install unplugged from AGA and once again while plugged in to AGA)?

Thanks again and sorry about the repeated questions. This is my first foray into PC gaming since the late 90's and I feel like a complete noob.

 

Okay, so now that I have a moment to look at your post with a clearer head; I'm running down a mental checklist of what to do tonight:

1. I think the power to the 1070 is good because the led lights and the fans on the card itself come on when I power up the laptop. The screws and hdmi outputs lined up perfectly as well so I'm thinking it's sitting correctly in the amp.

2. I'll check the Dell Bios to make sure it's the correct version (12.1.15) when I get home from work tonight.

3. I did a quick look into the latest drivers for my GeForce 965M and the new 1070 I'm trying to introduce via the amp and both searches point to the GeForce Game Ready Driver - WHQL version: 368.81. Is this a universal driver for both GPU's? If so, should I still install it twice (one clean install unplugged from AGA and once again while plugged in to AGA)?

Thanks again and sorry about the repeated questions. This is my first foray into PC gaming since the late 90's and I feel like a complete noob.

 

Ugh... sorry about the double post. I don't seem to be able to delete it. If there's a mod perhaps they can remove it for me.

 

Even for the same driver version number there are 2 versions for both mobile and desktop, so install the mobile first then the desktop + AGA

 

@ANNIVERSARY UPDATE! Since the last two days (and the update) ALL games in 4K have a hugh performance drop (15-20FPS) and show stuttering even with +50FPS... The only thing that changed during this time was the automatic anniversary update... Also tried the newly released "important marked" - Thunderbolt update and Bios update (.15) from Dell - no help.... so i will try to rollback also


EDIT:
Before rollback to an earlier WIN 10 build I tried to reinstall Nvidia and Intel drivers -> no change!
So finally after the rollback I can say ALL games run well again - and no stuttering at high FPS anymore!!!!!!!!

 

Not sure if this will help anyone here, but couldn't hurt to try. Regarding Titans and such just displaying a yellow triangle in device manager. I had come across a similar problem with an EGPU experiment I was doing on a lenovo laptop over Thunderbolt 3, via TB3 -> TB2 adapter over to a TB2 to PCIEx4 adapter. In THAT case even though a device was recognized by name it would display an error that there were not enough resources available to bring it online. Basically the number of PCIE devices I was attempting to initialize was overrunning a preset value either in a BIOS or something. The "fix" was a very complicated procedure called driver compaction which effectively frees up some of these "slots". HOWEVER, lazy as I am I refused to go through all this. I had guessed that if I could reduce this number in some other way I could get it to work. And so I changed the setting in device manager to show detached/disabled hardware, and then for old entries for the original video card, as well as the current working entries for the HDMI audio of the connected card, I removed/uninstalled those devices, as well as a couple other ancillary devices I knew I could safely uninstall for testing purposes such as micorphone and webcam inputs.

After this and a reboot I had success getting the card to work however that particular laptop (the P50) was plagued by stability problems with the TB3 controller asic which made gaming terribly unstable. I ultimately returned it and thats how I ended up with my AW15R2 and GA which thus far has worked flawlessly with my GTX980SC. I would encourage you if you are feeling courageous to give this a try and see if you can make that yellow triangle go away! I am waiting for a 1080 Ti announcement before upgrading my GA so hopefully by then if driver updates allow the newer TitanX to work the TI will just work out of the box!

 

And now the actual question I had which led me to this thread. I assume at least some of you, like me are using the AW15+GA as a desktop replacement with the lid shut and the Amp connected to external Monitors. I have a glass desk and I want to semi permanently mount my laptop, lid closed, under the glass, on a drawer for when I need to grab it and be mobile. As it is, closed on the desk WITH the amp it takes up WAY too much space. But this leads me to a problem in terms of powering the device on and off. I don't want to have to open the lid to power it on and off.. or slide it out from under the glass at all. I am sure I could concoct something to WOL the device from my phone but this also kind of obnoxious. Does anyone know of a USB power button or something of that nature? I suppose I COULD dismantle the chassis and solder a push button in series with the current power button, and notch the chassis for a couple small spade connectors so it is detachable, but this would obviously massively void my warranty. I googled around and they make such a thing for desktop that connect to the boards power control jumpers, but nothing for a laptop.

 

@toron_dude Hello I saw an earlier post where you said you owned a GA ( Z01g ) as opposed to the regular 9r7xn, can you please help me confirm if there is any difference and if it will work with an AW 17 r3 and a 1080 FE card, I'm about to purchase one and I cant find any info, I really would appreciate your input!

 

I'm not sure what the difference is between the different GA models but I do have the Z01G and it works with an Evga 1080 SC and a 17 R3. Considering the Evga I have is just a reference 1080 with a different cooler, then I don't why you would have an issue with a Founders edition.

 

Thank you so very much! That is all the confirmation I needed I will procede with my purchase!

 

Tried it and no luck, but thanks for the suggestion. The error for the Titan is "The driver for this device might be corrupted, or your system may be running low on memory or other resources. (Code 3)" so definitely possibly related to the issue you had. Do you have a link to the long way of doing it? And the Alienware rep said it'll be fixed Monday, but who knows how accurate that is.

 

I bought my AGA on ebay for $125 used, never even knew about different model numbers. I'm sure it's all fine....even though I have had a few issues lol, but I'm sure it's unrelated.

 

Well; I tried all of the steps up through the version where I do clean installs of the mobile drivers and the 1070 drivers. I updated the BIOS before all the other steps and still nothing. The AGA powers up but it doesn't recognize the 1070 card in my device manager.

Not sure what else to do but try to sell the whole set up and hope to recoup at least most of what I invested. Thanks for the suggestions Intotheblue.

 

Sure. So most of the information I found which helped in my trouble shooting came from this page https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/1656-diy-egpu-troubleshooting-faq/#error12_faq1 Now the ENTIRE post is incredibly useful but this link jumps right to tips for dealing with the scenario where device manager claims it cannot allocate resources for the device which seems similar to what you describe. However your error message IS distinctly different. So I would NOT advise jumping down a rabbit hole of following these directions. But maybe use them for a sort of inspiration, or adapt them to more specifically deal with your issue. Also.. Fingers crossed you get that fix on Monday!

 

That's strange, I'm sure there has to be a fix for it, or just some wire somewhere being fussy. My 1080 would be recognized right away when I got mine day-1, just some games would crash and others work. And with the unsupported Titan it still shows up in device manager. Try unplugging everything and unplug the GPU and remove it and insert it back in. Does your GPU need only 1 8-pin connector? If so, just try using the brown power wire. Shouldn't make a difference but that worked for me.

 

So, I've been out of the loop in this thread for many many many pages. Finally grabbed a 980ti to put into my amp for $310 (as of this writing they are selling out FAST on evga's website). I want to replace the stock amp PSU. I know the antec vp PSU fits fine and ports align. What other PSUs work? I think the corsair CX works? Not sure on that.

 

For those who updated to the Anniversary Update, did your GA disconnect button stop working as well?

 

Funny you should mention that Intotheblue. That was my final step before calling it a night. I disconnected everything; took the 1070 back out of the GA; then put it all back in using the brown power wire instead of the yellow (only has one 8-pin power slot).

I'll fire it up again tonight and run through those steps one last time. Wish me luck.

 

Finally got my msi gtx 1080 with the AGA working.. Reinstalled all graphics drivers, Intel and nvidia, reflashed bios to latest, still didnt work. Swapped over the 8 pin power lead and boom! Works!

Whats the difference in in the pcie power plugs?!

Anyhoo, gtx 1080 has a bandwidth of 320gbs but its only using 160... Also the memory clock is meant to be 10,000mhz.. And it runs at 5000.. Is this normal? I would appreciate it if someone else with a founders edition card could verify this as it seems to me thats alot of wasted potential!

Much love to all!

 

Actually don't know as i have never really used that option. If i want to disconnect then I just shut down everything regularly...

Also rolled back to previous win 10 build already (rollback will be only possible for 10 days according to MS) - which solved all performance issues which came with Anniversary Update....

 

Corsair CX works. I got the 650M since it was cheap. The x50 are newer than the x00 line. I'd recommend the 550 at least.

 

Some programs report the memory at the full 10 GHz, some display it in half. When overclocking the memory in MSI Afterburner for example, I got a 550 MHz memory overclock to give me 5550MHz which is the same as 11.1 GHZ / 11,100 MHz. You're not losing any performance don't worry.

 

Good news folks, got the Titan X working using the 369.09 driver which is available here, http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=409112

It's the Windows 10 Anniversary driver that you can't get on the Nvidia site. I would recommend everyone having a problem with their 1080's to install it too, it's an all inclusive driver set and not like driver 369.05 which is for Titan X only (which didn't work for me).

Ran Firestrike Ultra with stock clocks, 120% power and custom fan curve (yeah sorta sounds like a jet but oh well). Graphics score of 6816! Peaked at 1.9GHz on stock clocks. My best score with a 2.1GHz EVGA 1080 FTW was 5465.

For overclocking, I was able to add +217 MHz to the core and +700 MHz to memory for a final Firestrike Ultra graphics score of 7509 and reached a peak boost of 2101 MHz. This is insane.

 

Congratulations getting the Titan X to run! I

 

Did you try disabling GameDVR? It's what causes the slowdown.

 

Congrats on your working Titan Intotheblue. Unfortunately even after clean installs of everything Nvidia, updating the BIOS and Intel Chipset drivers and switching to the brown 8-pin power supply, I still get an endless reboot cycle and the 1070 still doesn't appear in the device manager.

Think it's worth trying that Windows anniversary update or does that seem exclusively like a Titan fix?

 

Try downloading the latest drivers I linked to in my post, I don't think you actually need to update your Windows.

 

Good morning all. Sad but true... after buying a used Alienware R3 laptop a few months ago, upgrading to a 2nd SSD drive, buying the AGA, and installing a few games, I've barely used it. I've been VERY interested in getting a 1080 GTX so I can try and play Division and other games at decent frame rates. But as I've been out of the loop, would someone mind answering a few questions?
1) When I went to upgrade the BIOS on my used Alienware, a thread recommended using 1.2.2, saying newer BIOS were causing issues with the AGA. Are folks using the latest laptop BIOS now or ?
2) When buying a 1080 GTX, I figured I'd want a Founders. Not because I was expecting to overclock, but simply so the card was less than 5" and would easily fit in the AGA. But it sounds like some of you are using other cards. My AGA is under a monitor stand, with a Sony LCD on top. And while I don't always use that monitor and could move it, etc. I don't have any room in the AGA for cards with coolers that won't allow the lid to close.
3) I'm still running 8GB of RAM in my R3. I'm sure DDR4 prices aren't TOO bad right now, and I'm thinking of upgrading to 16GB. Are all the memory slots under the bottom lid? Or is a stick hiding under the keyboard or something? Just wondering my best bet for upgrading.
Sorry for the newb-like questions. Notebook review is the best, and I love the community here. Hope you won't mind my getting caught up. Thanks guys!!!
P.S. Anyone running Division tried it at 2K (1440) res? Is that even possible? I've been meaning to see if it's playable at that res, but I'm downloading updates as I type.

 

Has anyone else had trouble installing Bios 1.2.15 on a AW15 R2? When I try to run the installer it just reboots and doesn't actually do anything

 

I'm on BIOS 1.2.15, make sure you have your AGA unplugged before you try to flash the new BIOS.

Merkman, there were in fact numerous BIOSes that were problmatic for the AGA, but 1.2.8 and 1.2.15 work fine.

 

Ugh... No good. It tells me the installer cannot continue because the driver could not find compatible graphics hardware.

I'm starting to wonder if there's something wrong with this EVGA 1070 SC itself. Strange that it doesn't even show up in the device manager. Others seem to at least have it show up, even if it isn't functioning properly.

 

Thanks man. So you had a 1080 running in the AGA, and then went to the Titan X for even more power? That's so cool. With a better budget, I'd be running a 1080 and have a Rift to play with. Instead, I'm still working on the video card.

If you don't mind my asking, what are you using the cards for? Gaming?

If so, what are you playing, and what framerates are you seeing with those cards? Division is beautiful on the 4K screen. I looked to see if I could find a res higher than 1080 that made sense, but I think I gotta wait for a desktop card to run higher res. The 970m lets me run 1080p at 45fps which is pretty good. But I'd love to know what res and frames I could pull with the 1080 GTX in the enclosure with the internal LCD.

Have a great day!

 

will
ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 1080 AMP Extreme 8GD5X fit the AGA?

 

not without modifying it.

 

what mods?

 

Ahh I will try again with the amp unplugged. thanks for the tip! Side note, after playing No mans sky with pretty abysmal FPS for a 980 (in 3K 21:9) I saw a GTX1070 SuperClock sitting all alone in the store for 400 so I picked it up and gave it a home. I shutdown my machine swapped the cards and booted it back up and it worked just fine. I then removed the 980 from device manager (after showing hidden devices) Along with his corresponding hdmi audio device. I selected in each case to also purge the driver. Of course this rendered my 1070 non functional for lack of driver. But I expected this. I then downloaded the newest driver from Nvidia 368.81, installed it, external screens came back up and after a reboot it was all good. So some points about my machine that might help others go that smoothely with 10 series cards:

I do not use the AGA in loopback mode (driving the internal display) I only use it on EXT monitors (1x 3K 21:9 and 1x 4K) with the lid shut, and internal display disabled from display settings, however right before removing the display driver from the 980 I opened the lid so that when those screens went dead the internal screen would come back online.

This rig now plays NMS in 3k max settings and (I blame the game not the rig for this) bounces between 57 and 110 FPS during play.

 

Yeah I added in a 4k internal screen and it's stunning, but a total pain to power. In Rise of the Tomb Raider, with mostly Ultra settings (using VXAO, reviews only seem to benchmark with HBAO+ which is vastly inferior) I was getting 30-31fps in the in-game benchmark. With the Titan X I'm getting...drum roll...37 fps. Womp womp, yeah pretty disappointing. Apparently Tomb Raider is more dependent on CPU than GPU so no matter how much I spend, I'm stuck with the performance of the i7 6700 because I didn't know enough about laptop CPUs when I purchased.

In the Division with a mix of settings (HBAO+ on), I was getting 42 fps with the 1080 and now getting about 15 fps more with the Titan X, so right where it should be. I bumped up a few more settings to medium/high and now at 42 fps with the Titan.

I have a Rift as well that I just use for movie watching in the cinema for now (full 1080p side by side 3D, 20GB MP4s). With the 1080 was getting 75fps and not the 90fps you'd expect. I've yet to test the Rift with the Titan yet but I assume I'll be at 90 fps now.

 

So how many FPS you used to ge on internall screen with the 1080?

That's why I never rush to buy it! My AMD 390x run those games really good on the internall screen at maximum setting.

 

Magnus - Great info! Thanks for sharing. How much ram in your laptop?

Intotheblue - REALLY appreciate the info. I didn't realize the 6700 might not be enough CPU, so I never even thought much about it. Could have gotten the next bump up with the 980M GTX, but I figured I'd need the Graphics Amp and a decent video card for gaming, and never really considered the CPU might be the bottleneck. Good to know. How much ram is in your system?

I'm still running the 8GB that came with my 17 R3 atm, but was just about to buy 2 8GB sticks and replace the two 4's, or maybe even pair the 2 4's and 2 8's to get it up to 24GB if that will work. Any thoughts on if it's worth the trouble?

Looking at Kingston KVR21S15S8/8 in case you have any thoughts on that RAM.

 

Well, the first Tomb Raider game was made to work with ATI cards, and it got the better performance with them. But from what I read, Rise of the Tomb Raider was made for Nvidia cards, so it should perform best with those cards.

 

Crammed an evga gtx 980 ti classified in my amp. Works like a charm but its 1/2 way open

 

I didn't realize only the 6820 or whatever it is CPU was overclockable. The Division and most other games only use like 50-75% CPU power and 100% GPU, but you get a few games here and there that will peg 100% CPU.

I have 16GB of ram currently, it's definitely necessary for the Oculus rift since it seems to be a memory hog since you'll have a few programs open.

Before that though, to even run out of 8GB I'd have to be running a game, have photoshop running with multiple 4K screenshots open and have like 10 browser tabs open, but RAM is so cheap might as well go to 16GB eventually. 24GB is overkill unless you get a great deal and have some money burning a hole in your pocket.

 

Appreciate you sharing. Saw this morning on Engadget that 10x0M GTX Nvidia laptops are being announced. Makes you wonder what kinda performance you'd get on one of those. I'm not much of a "sell and buy new gear" type. I normally use most of my computers till I run them into the ground. But if I could get the $1000 or so I put into my Alienware 17 R3, and get some sort of a deal (which would be the hard part on BRAND NEW laptops) on the newer ones, I'm sure as you indicate the performance would be better. I too didn't realize the non-top end R3 wasn't overclockable. But then, I've had a lot of trouble with overclocking in the past, and for the most part I'd say I'm over trying to squeeze extra % points out of hardware that sooner or later seems to be unstable. Life it too short, and I don't have the patience for all that troubleshooting.