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

Out of all the EGPU amps Alienware graphic amplifier is the cheapest made as for the enclosure, but it out performs the other brands available that are using the thunderbolt connection which is a bottleneck.

Can’t you just find a way just to use it as a cover. Take off the hing assembly and use it as a cover.

 

Bummer dude.

You should be able to repair it relatively easily - or use this as a perfect excuse to do that liquid mod! I have seen just the case sold online as spare parts / or a whole unit with a failed PS / logic board so you could always try to find one of those and pick it up cheap.

 

Ya, I tested out a Razer Core v2 when they were new, that thing was beautifully built and rock solid physically (flaky as hell in use with my Alienware 15 lol)

I currently have the lid sitting on top of the bottom, all hinge hardware removed - can't tell anything is amiss from the outside. I ordered a Corsair SF450 so I can go fully modular and will likely just do an open design, or maybe try to cannibalize a mATX or mITX chassis if I can find one suitable. The USB and PCIe/AGA Cable connectors will be the challenge with a mod into a proper case. I did want to add a TB3 10 Gbps NIC to my laptop, maybe I get a case that can fit that AND the AGA parts in one enclosure (maybe even only use the one PSU as well). Looking at Sonnet Echo Express SE1 - I can pull the boards all out of the little chassis and mount into a tower easy enough it looks like.

Already got all the needed stuff for the water loop.

UPDATE: having a hard time finding a suitable case that is not a full tower The corsair 350d could work but appears to have fallen off the face of the earth (leaving the 450d which is still very nice but bigger). There is a company called Sliger that makes a perfect case, the Cerberus but they are a boutique shop and it would be like $300 - not happening. Shame. Something like the Silverstone Raven but with 4-5 PCIe slots would be perfect. Also, bonus if I go with a tower type case, I can get the OWC 5.25" external enclosure off the desk as I can move the Blu Ray XL Drive into the new case - if I go that route.

 

Nivdia website just sold out of the 2080ti. Even at that price they are selling out like crazy. It must be good.

 

or the people too ignorant lol

 

They always sell out, always.

 

It’s just crazy people will buy it with their rent money if they had to just to have it! Gaming has no boundaries!

 

Probably more so there are just a lot of wealthy people out there. More than you realize. I would have got one but my 1080 Ti is already more than I need so no rush.

 

Seems pretty clear from benchmarks coming out that for 1440p gaming the 1080 Ti card is best, beaten only by the 2080 Ti card which is literally double the price. The question just is, how important will this ray-tracing stuff be in the next say, 5 years? Because by then I'll be upgrading my entire laptop anyway.

 

So let me get this straight.... you’re saying the top card from last generation plus the top card for
The new generation are the ones that get the best benchmarks?

Ya don’t say!


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My friend just got his RTX 2080ti card. I am going to put his unit in my amp to test it out. Want to see what this hype is all about! I have a 2080 at the moment. Let’s see how this plays out! I still have 14 days to return my 2080 at Best Buys.

 

I am extremely interested in the Firestrike scores of the 2080ti, 2080, and your previous card before the 2080.

 

I will see what I can do as for the GTX1080 I don’t have that card anymore but I recall it was somewhere around 9574~

I am not Hardkore but I usually just look at FPS for a resolution

 

Should have been much higher if that was a Firestrike score. My 17r3 with a 1080 in the AGA gets 15000-17200 Firestrike score.

 

That might have been overall score. Not just graphics score

 

So close to getting the point but nah, missed it.

 

What resolution should I use ?

 

That score range is using my ASUS ROG 1440p monitor at native resolution.

My laptop screen is connected to the iGPU so I always use external screen connected to AGA for graphics benchmarks


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Yeah I am using internal screen but I have set it to 1440p. Testing it now with 2080ti with firestrike

 

Score is 18,161 with 2080ti

 

Wow, that’s a lot lower than I expected.

What’s your systems specs?

Keep in mind, when using the laptop screen with the AGA it takes a big performance hit because the cable has limited bandwidth and has to send all the data BACK to the laptop to drive the screen. If you have an external display you’d see much better score.


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Yes I am losing a lot from using internal screen. I have 13R3 with 7700hq with Oled screen.

I am going to pop back in my 2080 and do a test again. Maybe 2080ti for AGA is bottleneck with 7700hq

 

I suspect the 2080 will also be overkill for that CPU. Best bang for buck with that CPU and internal screen is probably going to be the 1080, maybe even 1080ti.

Really I wish I had access to all this hardware to do extensive testing with different configurations but I don’t have the time to have my own YouTube channel


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2080 Firestrike score is 15351

 

Wow....ouch. You are taking a considerable hit. That 2080 should not be getting lower score than a 1080.

You can disable Gsysnc in the ncidia control panel. Display > Set up gsync.


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Yeah there is something wrong I suspect with the 2080ti. I am going to install new drivers to it. I am doing benchmark with both card and they both show the same results! Something is not right. Shadow of Tomb Raider both card showed 58-59 FPS on same settings

I am reinstalling the drivers

 

The weird part is that now it’s saying the windows version is not compatible with the drivers on my computer. Lol

I have version 1803.

 

Anyone with 13r3 and have a 2080ti or 2080 using internal screen, can you post your firestrike scores. Also how are you suppose to set up the settings?

 

Check this post out. He's not using the Internal screen but External and his FireStrike score is 25,428

https://egpu.io/forums/builds/2017-...8032gbps-aga-razer-core-win10-1803-theitsage/

 

That's an awesome find. I like how he compared the AGA to a TB3 eGPU and at different resolutions.

It does seem (based on my own 1080 in AGA) that his score for the 2080 at QHD is rather low - its only 1,100 points higher than my top score with a 1080.

 

Thats because a 2080 is not that much faster....

 

But can it be such a large difference in firestrike score using internal screen?

The weird part is using benchmark from the games both cards are showing the same FPS using the same settings. There is something else going on with my system preventing it from working the cards correctly or the limits of the internal screen is limiting the functionality of the cards. I wish someone who has the new RTX cards can test firestrike using the internal Oled screen and get me some numbers. I was fiddling it with settings for hours to try and see what I could do to show more increase in performance with the 2080ti card but nothing worked. The games are buttery smooth for sure with both cards but the 2080ti is NOT showing in gameplay any gains. It only shows performance gains in the firestrike but it’s not even significant.



Before I go crazy. On firestrike for the settings

Do I use Anisotropic and disable antialiasing ???


There is definitely something wrong with my setup. I turned resolution to 1080 and did a benchmark with assassin Creed Odessey and it still shows the same FPS at 53 whether it’s 1080 or 1440 resolution.

Any ideas guys what can be wrong??

Either that or assassin Creed Odessey is not optimized for the new cards

 

The internal screen does affect greatly yeah, thats well documented. it can go up to 15% of a performance decrease because of it.

 

I will try it on my son 240hz screen. So I just hook up the screen HDMI cable to the Alienware amp hdmi IO and then on the computer will automatically know and switch to external screen?

 

YOu might need to press windows+P on your desktop and then select "display on second screen only".

You should be good then but please note that you need to use the display port. That one is directly routed to the GPU.

 

Okay. So look for display port hdmi on the back of the AGA. Got it

 

Wow I just looked at this video. What a diffence with using external display vs internal screen for 1080ti

I bet this will be a huge difference also for the 2080ti card

 

Okay tested it again with external monitor and wow what a difference in score. So it appears that if your going to use the new RTX cards you MUST use external monitor to take advantage of the performance like the video above. Major bottleneck is the internal screen. Firestrike score with external monitor 1920x1080 with trilinear and MSAA setting 24,975. Firestrike score with Anistropic and MSAA setting score is 25,301.

So card RTX card works but must use external monitor to take advantage.


Shadow of Tomb Raider internal screen Benchmark 58FPS

External Screen 79

It looks as though assassin Creed Odessey is terribly optimized for these new cards. FPS is drop better on bench but not much. FPS external 62. Internal 53. Lol. Terrible

 

Sweet, I'm a bit confused though... is there a new bios update or something to support RTX?

 

No.

 

The bottleneck isn't the screen - it's the cable. The AGA cable doesn't have all the PCI lines that the Graphics card is capable of using...as such it is a bottleneck. When the video signal has to be sent BACK to the laptop through the AGA cable it takes away bandwidth from the graphics card to be used to drive the laptop screen.

 

Sadly, Assassins creed (open world games) is more CPU bound. So with the 5-8% reported loss when using AGA i am sure you should be closer to 70+ fps. Not an insane jump but yeah 6 core is the new wave with these CPU intensive games.

 

I don’t think so as I don’t see CPU usage all that high compared to the GPU usage. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is open world yet it’s so much better optimized than assassin Creed Odessey IMO.

 

Not odyssey but it's the same engine. Odyssey looks a lot more detailed than Origins.



Agreed that Optimization does play a big roll. The new Tomb Raider is very well optimized.

 

I purchased a Dell S2417DG monitor with 2560x1440 resolution, G-sync with 165hz refresh rate. Great deal at Bestbuy on a open box unit! OMG what a difference. Bottleneck is definitely the cable and internal screen. Going from 60hz refresh to 144hz is world of a difference and the obvious 13 inch screen to 24inch!

There is noticeable increase in performance from the 2080 to 2080ti. Shadow of tomb Raider with 2080 about 62 FPS and 2080ti 78FPs on everything maxed out settings.

The 2080 is on par with the GTX1080ti. Slight increase but not as much as 2080ti. Now I have to contemplate should I return my 2080 for this card as it has proven that there is no bottleneck that I can see with my 7700hq cpu and using the AGA on external screen

 

Awesome. Your CPU will still be a bottleneck on those higher end cards but that's obviously still an improvement. Curious to see your new Firestrike scores.

 

Yes I am sure but I am not with those numbers I can live with when using external display. I already posted it earlier. Firestrike score with 2080ti was 25,548


I don’t care much about firestrike scores as the thing I am only interested is ULTRA settings on everything and getting high sustainable FPS over 60.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark on ultra setting and maxed out setting was 78 FPS on 2560x1440. That’s good enough for me!

 

@cruisin5268d @cn555ic i dont think that pci 4x lanes bootleneck the gpu, as you can see on my score, I have 31.587 points on gpu score, that is in fact better gpu score than a desktop
https://www.3dmark.com/fs/16457282

 

Nice. What did you do to achieve that score?

 

first of all, do you have to use the nvidia driver from DELL for your laptop, the driver for the external gpu can be upgraded, but the laptop driver should remain stock to have better performance.
second, dont forget to have the the BIOS update that talk about AGA improved performance, in my case i was using the A06 and i have to upgrade to A08 that talk about that
and for overclocking i use liquid metal on everything, laptop and external gpu. temperatures reamin low and i can push the clocks up. for example i am using my 4710hq at 3.5ghz on all cores all the time using the ultimate performance plan that can be unlocked using a CMD.
i created a custom clock curve for my gtx 1080ti. another thing that i changed (but is not needed) is the power supply. i am using a NZXT650E. i had to mod the case 2 times. one to fit the gtx1080ti aorus extreme. that i think is a 3 slots card, and the second time to fit the power supply that is 1cm taller than the stock one. i changed the power supply only to reduce the noise. my next step is change the stock front fan, actually inverted that fan to push out air. any other question ?