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

Did you uninstall all the AMD drivers? I would try that, then make sure you uninstall all the Nvidia drivers and reinstall them.

 

how do the desktop cards in the GA compare to the new pascal laptop cards?

i have a desktop 1080, i could buy the amp and use that on the AW laptop or i can wait till alienware releases their 1080 models (this is for the 17 r4 with the UHD screen)

my reasoning is i am stuck with a Chromebook that cant even handle the amount of tabs i need, this thing crashes at least twice a day. So i am a little impatient, especially since dell wont even give us an official release date

i will be carrying this laptop (traveling) so the negative is id need to carry the giant laptop + the GA.

 

The desktop cards and laptop cards are essentially the same now.

you will still get a slight performance increase in the desktop situation due to the desktop GPU having bit better cooling but they are now very similar performance (at stock non overclocked speeds)

 

well then no point of hauling around the amp for maybe 1-3 fps

 

Hello,

I am experiencing a lot of issues with my Alienware setup. I own an Alienware 17 R2 and an Alienware Graphics Amplifier (AGA).

Recently I purchased an EVGA GEFORCE GTX 1060 6GB for use inside your amplifier.

The issue : Laptop manages to identify the 1060 succesfully, but when trying to make use of a 3D application (Game, benchmarks) the GPU doesn't perform near the level it is supposed to.
Most of the time is near 50% utilized and it won't go up more.

Applications I have tried :
-Cinebench R15 (OpenGL result is from 40-80 FPS)
-Grand Theft Auto V (GeForce recommended settings for the 1060, 1-5 FPS)
-Valley Benchmakr (DX11, High settings, Windowed, 1-3 FPS)

I've tried the following to make it work :

-Multiple fresh installations of both Mobile and Desktop drivers from nVidia.
-Using newer and older versions of the nVidia drivers to make it work.
-I have tried using it with no drivers, and then installing them to see if it works.
-I have tried performing clean installations and restarting it then pluging in the AGA but it still doesn't work.
-I have tried to install it with the AGA connected and no restart and still won't work.
-I have tried to install it with the AGA connected with restart and still wont work.

System Specification :
Inside the laptop :
CPU : Intel Core i7 4720HQ @2.60 Ghz
GPU : nVidia Geforce GTX 970m
RAM : 8GB
Inside the AGA :
PSU : DELL (The one that it came with)
GPU : EVGA GTX 1060 6GB

Note that :
Pictures of the installed GPU can be found here: [ https://imgur.com/a/B10gG ]
Pictures of the best result on CINEBENCH R15 can be found here : [ https://imgur.com/a/40wP9 ]

The usual performance result from the GTX 1060 6GB in cinebench should be near 150FPS (-10% of possible loss and input lags from the AGA)
Windows, GeForce, Alienware Command Centre, EVGA OC UTILITY, all of them recognize correctly the 1060.

All mesurments have been taken with either in-game FPS viewers and stat analyzers or/and with the EVGA Precision XOC (Steam Version).
I have no way to connect to a second screen, so we have to find a way to figure it out with the laptop's panel.

GPU2 in MSI Afterburner (iGPU) is having spikes of seconds to 100% then down to 0% then back to 100% all the time, while the main external GPU (1060) gets used at most up to 50%

What I need :
I would really appreciate all the help you can give me so I can unlock the full potential of my new 300 Euro GPU. Please get back to me as fast as you can.


Hope to hear soon from you,

 

First of all make sure you have the latest of everything, so latest drivers such as alienware control center and GPU drivers, the latest bios and last but not least turn high performance on in the Nvidia control panel within the power management settings.

 

I had the latest of everything except the latest BIOS, I also had set it on performance mode in the nVidia control panel with the power management settings.

BTW, I browsed on some other forums and reddit and heard something about another external monitor. I don't have one. I want to use the AGA with laptop's monitor, that is possible, right ?

 

Haha okay so you're on the guy on /r/Alienware -- okay -- so you will see a HUGE drop in performance if you don't use an external monitor. The reason is that you're piping the video back and forth from the amp to your laptop screen. It causes a big drop in performance. That's why you're seeing bad perf numbers.

 

Its not that huge of a performance drop. it shouldnt not be like 50%.

 

Okay, but that doesn't really explain the utilization of the GPU being always under 50% .... BUT if that's the case, how are some people using their laptop screen only and getting good performance ? I have screenshots of that if needed...

 

Can you borrow a monitor or hook it up to a TV and let us know if anything changes? You prob need to go through different scenarios.

 

I'll buy an HDMI cable and connect it to my TV, it should work, right ?

 

Yeah, make sure to plug it into the amp/1060 not your laptop.

 

Thanks dude, will do so and update you, I will also update the BIOS just in case. Thanks for your help again

 

No problem

 

Update, after a BIOS update, and some digging around in MSI Afterburner and GPU-Z I found out that my laptop recognizes correctly the 1060, but it only utilizes the iGPU, any way for me to change that ? I have changed everything as recommended in the nVidia control panel.

P.S. I will try soon the another monitor thing, I just have to locate an HDMI cable and connect everything to my TV. Although if someone knows how to fix the problem above and make the laptop utilize the 1060 would be way more convenient.

 

Okay Guys, update, issue is fixed

 

What resolved the issue?

 

1. Re-installing the BIOS.
2. Clearing both intel and nvidia drivers with DDU.
3. Installing the intel drivers from dell's website
4. Installing nvidia drivers from nvidia's website (mobile version)
5. Setting performance settings on pc and nvidia cc
6. Setting preferred gpu the nvidia one on nvidia cc
7. Using MSI Afterburner and EVGA XOC together to slightly overclock the card and set a manual fan curve (forced the card to be utilized all the time)

 

I have a few fundamental questions abt the aga :

Does it work on internal g sync display cause somewhere i had read that. It needs the optimus/the igpu for these things to work ? (as in gsync displays the gpu is wired directly to the display)

What is the perf hit of the aga on the internal display ?

 

I've read the same thing and decided to test this tonight.

I have an Alienware 17 R4 with the 120hz 2560x1440 G-Sync display.

I've never owned the AGA or used it before with any other Alienware notebooks. I assume, from what I've read, when you use the AGA it's supposed to disable the internal dGPU.

In this case it does not. All 3 GPU's are active. Yes, all 3. The 530, my internal 1070 and my external 1080. This laptop does not have optimus, but the 530 is still active. The 530 seems to be active when I plug in a USB-C to DisplayPort adapter. The 530 is what drives that connection.

Anyway, I tried disabling the internal 1070 using device manager when using the AGA and when the laptop boots the internal display freezes with the initial Alienware logo and the spinning Windows 10 bootup balls. The only way I could do anything was to hook a display up directly to the 1080 in the AGA.

So from what it looks like, unless I'm doing something wrong, if your internal display is a Gsync display, the AGA won't be able to use that. If you want to use the AGA and your laptop has an internal Gsync display, you have to use an external display with the AGA.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong or doing something wrong. And if this was already mentioned previously, I'm sorry.

 

Pretty often when I boot my Notebook the AGA is only connected via PCI-E 1x. I have to do several reboots until it connects via PCI-E 4x. Is this a known issue? Is there something I can do to make it work more reliable? Using the latest drivers / BIOS.

 

tnx for trying, plud aga is buggy so still have hope maybe someone else can also clarify @iunlock
@ Alienware-L_Porras
@Papusan @Mr. Fox

 

Hi bro. I cannot answer any questions about the Alienware eGPU. I have never even seen one.

 

Oh okay no problem u were the op so i thought u might know.

@bloodhawk ur knowledgeable abt the egpu's so can u shed some light on this ?

 

I Have had an AGA for years and its still buggy as hell

One way to know for sure if the AGA is being used by the internal display is run Firestrike or Heaven (free) benchmark with just the laptop ( make sure G-sync is enabled In Nvidia control panel ) then do it again make sure you get similar score. write that score down

Then shut down, boot with the AGA plugged in and Run the benches again ( make sure G-sync is enabled In Nvidia control panel ) see if the score has increased if it has then its working.

just because they are "active" I'm guessing that you mean you can see them in device manager doesn't necessarily mean they are all working is my guestimate....

 

From the previous post it seems like either that there is not "mux" or its not switching between the GPU's properly. TBH, PCIe based eGPU's work best on laptops that dont have the iGPU enabled.

Im certain though that the AGA works on the prior models than the R4 on both the, internal and external display. The issue that you are referring to could just because of the changes made to accommodate the new Pascal GPU's. In which case Dell should be able to fix it.
Or you can enabling PCIe Hot Plugging in the BIOS and see if that helps.

If the GPU's are showing up in the device manager, that doesnt per say mean that they are active. Only way to test this would be to run something like Unigen Valley/Heaven. Also if the drivers were installed correctly, there should be a NVDIA graphics switcher in the status bar. Though it might not work properly with the latest drivers. (Nvidia knows about the issue, and might fix in the next driver release)

 

if you open geforce experience (setting/general) or nvidia control panel (click the home button) it will the show the current active GPU

 

When you connect rhe AGA the laptop gpu will be disabled. electronically. they cannot be used at the same time.

 

Yeah thats what i thought, was trying to show the poster a way to prove it as he'/she may have seen 3 in device manager or some thing and thought they were all working

 

Not entirely true. On system with the iGPU enabled and a mux, both GPU can stay enabled. and load can be shifted / assigned if the app being used supports it. There is also the GPU switcher (NVIDIA) that lets your switch between GPU's. I can even do this on my system with out any iGPU.
My internal 4k display runs on the 980 and the eternal displays off of the 1080.

 

Oh wait, my bad, he talks about the R4 version. But I still think they fully disable the internal GPU, easy to test though if there are indeed 3 devices in the device manager insteaad of 2.

 

All 3 devices are enabled. When I go into Alienware Control Center, it also shows all 3 "on". When I had the AGA plugged in it did not disable any of the adapters. And as you know when you have a Gsync display, you don't have (and can't disable because you don't have) optimus. Even on the non-gsync models, when you do the FN-F7, it doesn't actually even disable the internal graphics adapter. It just changes it so the dGPU card is primary. The integrated 530 is still enabled and active, I proved that by plugging in my USB-C to DisplayPort cable and saw my 4k monitor active on the 530.

It's pretty easy to see which device is active and being used, I just watch GPU usage in MSI Afterburner.

My guess is because the R4 with Gsync has a different motherboard where the Gsync display is directly wired to the 1070, you can't use the AGA GPU for the internal display. Makes sense to me. Just a shortcoming of having a Gsync display.

So if any of you want to use the AGA with the internal display, get a non-gysnc display that way optimus is available and the graphics signal can be routed to the internal display.

If anyone else wants to test, have at it. I've packed up my AGA and am not using it at the moment.

 

Hey guys, just got my amp with the 1070 and holy crap can that card go! What Drivers are the other 10XX guys here using? Ive been using 368.39 desktop drivers but everytime i try to patch up i get an error 43 on my 1070 :/

 

Try it after uninstalling the old ones first with DDU.

 

Ive used ddu to whipe in safe mode and then proceeded to install the current mobile drivers with no amp. Then plug in amp and the 1070 appears as generic display adapter. If i use the auto windows driver updater or the current desktop driver installers it will detect it as a 1070 but with the nasty error 43 :l thanks for the reply btw

 

You should do a whipe and just install the mobile drivers as usual. shutdown. hook up the AGA and boot again. the desktop gpu should be detected now as well. there are no separates mobile drivers anymore. its just 1 package sine the ofdicial support for hot swappable external gpu's.

 

Edit: posted on the wrong thread, please delete

 

Sorry for pushing my self... But still hoping for a solution for this problem. Isn't this a known / common problem? Alienware even provides a "solution" for this issue ( http://www.dell.com/support/article/de/de/debsdt1/SLN302343) that doesn't help at all. Even the latest BIOS containing "AGA enhancement" (1.3.9; http://www.dell.com/support/home/de...alienware-15-r2&languageCode=ge&categoryId=BI) cannot fix it. Yesterday I did not get the AGA to work properly at all - so I had to disconnect it to use my notebook... :/

 

Don't know if this will help, but when I had my 17r3 it was the same very unpredictable!

I used to boot up without the aga connected the when I see the Alienware bios logo, I plug in aga

It always booted to windows then gave me a box telling me to restart to enable amp

Then usually it would boot (not always) at x4

This is not recommended I would guess and whatever you do is at your own risk, just saying

 

I can only recommend to return it or try another cable or card. It seems to be not very usual and I cannot reproduce the problem.

 

Hi people, after all the alienware 17 fiasco in terms of heat and what not, I'm considering to get myself the alienware 13, due to the oled screen it has and me liking small systems.
So suddenly the AGA is an option for me. It's likely that I won't buy one yet until next gpu lineup, but I wanted to hear a quick overview from you guys.

It's quite a task to find what I'm looking for in 244 pages, but to sum it up my questions:

- How well does the dekstop gpu perform on avarage compared to a normal desktop?
- Any issues with drivers? + Is it possibel to get both latest drivers from nvidia both for my laptop as desktop (in the aga) GPU's?
- How does the support continue for these machines? What I mean is compatibility with future GPU's does it work out of the box, do wee need to wait on updates, if so how fast are these updates, or doesn't it support it?
- And final question, is an (even better) option to get a 3rd party external gpu box to connect to the thunderbolt port of the alienware 13?

 

- How well does the dekstop gpu perform on avarage compared to a normal desktop?
Very well i would say There is a slight drop in performance 2 - 5% i found if using an external display, a little bit more if using the internal GPU
- Any issues with drivers? + Is it possibel to get both latest drivers from nvidia both for my laptop as desktop (in the aga) GPU's?
I haven't had any been using the AGA years (I know some people have)
- How does the support continue for these machines? What I mean is compatibility with future GPU's does it work out of the box, do wee need to wait on updates, if so how fast are these updates, or doesn't it support it?
Going forwards only AW/Dell know that But I Upgrade GPU's a lot and never had any real issues I had a bit of hard work getting a pascal titan X working because i got literally 1 day after release but it was fine with a couple days

- And final question, is an (even better) option to get a 3rd party external gpu box to connect to the thunderbolt port of the alienware 13?
You will get even more of a performance hit when using TB3 like a razer core or similar, plus if you have stuff on the USB ports of the core TB3 it gets even worse, you dont get this with the AMP, ONLY Real downside to the amp is you stuck with AW!

just my thoughts it can be a little buggy at times but it's a great device IMHO

 

thank you, very helpful information.

 

Anybody know if it's possible for me to get some replacement screws for securing the GPU? If I contacted Alienware support do you think they would just send me a couple?

 

I'm using an ASUS Strix 1080 OC. Guess the card should be no problem. Since it sometimes works I still hope it is a configuration problem. But lately I cant get it to work at all - too bad... :/ It often gets recognized as PCIE 3.0x4. But as soon as I run any 3d application it somehow switches to 2.0x4 and gets pretty slow. After rebooting it usualy than gets back to 3.0x1...

Edit: And one more question: when I connect the AGA and turn on the notebook it at least powers off and on again one time without the screen beeing active. Sometime it event "restarts" 2-3 times. Is this a normal behavior? Anyone else expecting this?

 

Man i swear i tried that but i went and did it (again?) for whatever reason it worked this time, all up to date! So, thank you sir!

 

Yes all the time.....

To add also don't get to hung up on 2.0 vs 3.0 or even 1.0 pcie it really doesn't make much difference

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/pci_express_scaling_game_performance_analysis_review,17.html

You can read it or go to conclusion page and see the result hardly any difference with a single card set up

if you use a single high-end graphics card then really, even the PCIe Gen 1.1 slot would be sufficient. Gen 2.0 is preferred and Gen 3.0 only brings in a marginal improvement. Pretty much everybody anno 2015 is on PCIe Gen 2.0 though, so if you are worried that performance is cut in half due to that faster PCIe Gen 3.0 slot, then think again in a modest 2 to 3% percent on average.

 

While im in here anyone tried disabling the intel onboard graphics to use the amp on desktop? would be nice to remover that load from the CPU

 

When not running in 3.0x4 mode it seems bugged as hell... It's awfully slow - not just a few percentages. In most games even the cursor lags! But benchmarks show almost the same results... I don't get it...