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

Oh I wasn’t basing it on clockspeeds! My bad. I was talking about the review Tom’s Hardware published yesterday. The m51 only gets 92fps in rise of the tomb raider while the desktop version 2080 gets 172. Battlefield V 122fps on mobile vs 150 on desktop. It’s even bigger of a disparity in some other titles. I’d be paying the same price for the 51m with a huge hit in performance. I think I’d rather go the egpu route. I am taking what you’re saying into consideration. I don’t know how mobile or fun having an egpu would be, but I would never pay the extra money for marginal increase in performance. Thankfully the 5-10% hit doesn’t bother me much, but I will be splitting my time between an external monitor and traveling

 

any gpu going in the aga has to be 2 slots wide. not 2.25, 2.5 etc, 2.0 only.

ppl have made bigger cards fit but it involves modding, so you will void your warranty.

also, dell tech support will only give you support for the aga and the gpu if its a founder edition from nvidia.

 

egpu all day mate.

 

Where did you base off that the 2080gtx in the 51m is only half of the desktop version?

 

This, pretty much only FE and reference blower boards fit without mods.

 

Have you got a link to that comparison? Thanks.

 

i think they are around 10-15% less juice than desktop however inside that small form you have a desktop class gpu and a desktop class 9900k, thats a lot of heat with will of course throttle all the time. so this will reduce performance further,.

best bet is to buy an aw17 with a 1080 for mobile and get a 2080ti in ur aga for home. i have same and connect to a 3440x1440 100hz when at home.

1080 is a great card, pretty much v near a 2080 but without ray tracing.

uv your cpu, get some decent thermal paste/ liquid metal, and use a laptop cooling pad or at least keep the laptop raised an inch of the surface its on to aid airflow. clean the fans regularly they get very dusty.

good luck with whatever you decide

 

I already have an AW15R3 with the 1070 and an empty AGA. But I mean I just did nto see any indication that a 2080 laptops with good cooling would perform only half compared to its desktop coutnerpart.

 

wait for ppl to post thermals before parting with your cash. its too early atm i think....

make sure ur cpu will not bottleneck the egpu.

depending on ur cpu, if u need to upgrade then buy a new or refurb lappy, i think 8950hk aw17 better than 9900k. for many reasons.

 

Maybe just me but if I were going to buy a new gaming laptop right now I would be looking at the top spec Area-51m. With it's bigger footprint it should run a lot cooler than the new thinner 15/17m's. Also, the rtx 2080 is reported by nvidia to outperform the 17r5 w/gtx1080 by ~25-30% so it should be good for some time to come without needing an AGA or external monitor. Here's a link to a review done a couple of days ago;

https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/alienware-area-51m

 

Imo if you have a 10XX laptop now, it might not be beneficial at all to jump ship. The GPU jump is too small. The CPU's are running on their last legs generation wise. The 9900K is more than sufficient for any game or application otu there but also running extremely hot. Next gen might offer all that with far less heat thanks to a die shrink. Thermals are becoming a straight up issue this generation and I have yet to see if the 51M can alleviate this.

Actually the 51M is only midly thicker but the footprint itself is similar, its also lighter. So I wouldnt expect if you come from a 17 in Alienware that you will notice a big difference regarding carrying it around. But you are right, the AGA is only really beneficial if you use an external monitor. Without it is just throwing cash away.

 

Can I just leave the case open like some people are doing and fit it in there? Do I need to do anything special if I go that route? Thanks for the help guys

 

In Tom’s hardware Review. He’s posted the FPS numbers he was getting with major games and I compared them with the desktop 2080. I uploaded the results below. You can find it with a quick search

 

Might just be different benchmarks runs in general? Because with that logic the 1080 would also have performed 60% less which we know didnt in previous generation laptops.

 

Ofcourse you can leave it open all the time! There is nothing wrong or right but if you have pets and young kids then it might be an issue. Open case is the best solution to cool the casing.

 

I have the 2080ti in my AGA and it’s performing so well that it has stopped my itch to get the new Area 51m, Otherwise I would have already ordered it as the 1060 in my 13R3 is not suitable for my gaming needs at the moment. I want to play all my games in max/ultra settings and have the resolution modifier set to 120-140% on 1440 resolution. I have zero issues with thermals. New gen Laptops even with the 2080 will have some type of thermal issues but I am sure with tweaking it can be manageable but still on the high thermal side. Also the 13r3 is the best laptop I have seen (oled for the win)

 

Awesome! Is the fan disabled when you leave the case open? Does this mean the 2080’s I linked earlier would fit with the case being open? Or would I still have to go the founders card route? Thanks again

That’s pretty sweet! I’d definitely go the Oled route if they were releasing before April

 

The AGA fans spins at a constant rpm. The GPU fans are controlled by the GPU dependent on GPU temps. As for the cards you listed it will be very tight. Most likely cover can’t be closed.

 

Thanks for the info. I meant if I opened the case, would that single fan be disabled. I’d rather leave the case open. Would these fit if I left it open? https://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce...s=rtx+2080&dpPl=1&dpID=5144iTB1VLL&ref=plSrch
https://www.amazon.com/GeForce-Type...s=rtx+2080&dpPl=1&dpID=51NskWE7TVL&ref=plSrch
Any special requirements while leaving it opened? Will it still operate normally?

 

The fan will continue to spin whether it is opened or closed. If you don’t want the fan on, then unplug the wire from the circuit board.

 

Great! Any idea if either card mentioned would fit with the case open? Or is that not the deciding matter in this case?

 

If you plan on having the case open. ANY brand you go with will FIT

 

^^^ This. The benefits of a real, full-power 2080 Ti in a (properly cooled) AGA are huge. I'm thoroughly skeptical Dell will fix their thermal woes with the 51m if the AW17 R4 is anything to go by. The GPU thermal throttling issues are the stuff of legend at this point. The AGA eliminates all that GPU heat and throttling crap, allowing your CPU to run cooler and maybe even get a bit more OC out of it. I'll eat my hat if a 51m with mobile RTX is anywhere close to a 51m with an AGA/2080 Ti in games. My 'old' AW17 is good to go for gaming purposes for another 4 years now at least, far more attractive to me than $5k for a high-end 51m.

 

Sorry, this just got me thinking. Is it worth the extra funds for the 2080ti instead of 2080? What card were you using cn555ic? Last question until I get everything I swear! Lol

 

I am using the Nvidia RTX2080ti FE. The AGA closes with no issues. There also needs to be a lot of modifications on the AGA to keep the temps in check. The AGA was meant for blower fan type of cards instead of the fan setup for cooling the card.


Don’t worry about the question. Fire away as I have no issues to help you. Either way this will be one of purchases. Just make sure you use an external display if your going with a 2080ti.

 

While I still would not recommend saddling yourself with an AGA to begin with I think you need to consider the capability of your laptop's CPU. In rick's case he has an i7-7820hk and I think that this will be badly bottlenecked with a 2080ti. Even a 2080 will probably bottleneck, but not as bad. In other words I doubt that he would see any significant performance diff with a 2080 in his AGA. I also think that the new top end area-51m with a 2080 and i9 cpu would probably outperform his current AGA w/2080ti. The reports I've read so far seem to indicate the top end area 51m w/i9 processor runs a lot cooler than any other laptop out there right now (but not as cool as a liquid cooled desktop of course).

So, unless you get a laptop with newer i9 like i9-8950hk, or similar, it's probably not worth spending extra on a 2080ti imho. Also, nvidia recommends 32Gb of ram with both the 2080/2080ti gpu's.

While not gospel, it may be useful to use the following bottleneck calculator to give you an idea about cpu/gpu matching.

https://thebottlenecker.com/calculator

 

Ok awesome!! I have to make my decision by tomorrow here. I’m still tossing back and forth between getting the 2080 Asus and keeping the case open just for how quiet it is. I can’t have much noise when I’m working/gaming. The 2080Ti is really tempting though with that extra power. I do wonder if they’ll update the AWGA anytime soon. I feel they could make it more accommodating. Haha I’ll fire away if I think of anything else. Thanks again

 

I

I honestly didn’t really think about a lot of those points. I’ll either end up with the i7 8750 for my m15. Thank you for mentioning them Tom and providing that reference

 

Please dont use that site, I own the 7700HQ version and it says that the 1070GTX would be bottlenecked. They base it on CPU benchmark + GPU benchmark scores. But they forget the fact that some games just score higher with more CPU power because more clock cycles are being used for physics. This does nto automatically the GPU is bottlenecked. If the CPU is below 80% of usage and the GPU is at 100% of usage, you can be sure there is not graphical bottlebeck. The 2060 is just a tad faster than the 1070GTX so should work fine. The 7820HK can be clocked to 7700K levels which would be more than enough for the 2080TI.

 

Ya, like I said it's not gospel but I would not completely dismiss it either. I have a 17r4 i7 7700hq w/gtx1060 and AGA w/gtx1080ti and my cpu is def the bottleneck for all my high demand Flight and Racing sims, esp. in VR (oculus rift). I'm sure if I replaced it with a 1080 (and maybe even a 1070) I would not notice any significant differences. I see by your signature that you only have a 1070 in your AGA. Have you tried anything better? Thanks.

Measuring %cpu vs % gpu does not always tell you the whole story either since some apps utilise both of these differently and some make better use of multi-cores (but most do not). Likewise, running benchmarks does not always tell you much either since all this does is measure the card performance form where it is installed (AGA). The only real test is the actual FPS performance you can achieve at different graphics settings.

Also, most of the cpu/gpu combos in this bottleneck calculator are based on desktops so you need to make a few adjustments to take lower freq's we normally see in laptops.

This guy is looking at a 15m w/ i7 8750H and using this tool it seems to imply that a 2080 would be a better match in an AGA and I'm not sure it this cpu can be overclocked successfully or not. Nor am I sure what the i7 7820hk can be safely overclocked to. My point is that Laptop cpu's can and do cause bottlenecks with higher performance gpu's.

Just academic since I'm not about to upgrade my laptop for at least another year or so. But, if I were to do this I would def consider the new top end i9 area 51m w/2080 and use it without an AGA. Maybe later add an AGA w/2080ti? Actually, my next PC purchase, since I'm not travelling much now (= retired) is likely to be a good gaming desktop.

 

I have tried all 3 cards before i settled with the 2080ti. Tried 2070, 2080 and then 2080ti. The only card that I was able to consistently get 60-65fps was the 2080ti card. I saw the performance jumps of each card. With the 7700hq the way I have it set to 60-65fps I guess I wouldn’t notice any bottleneck but TBH I really don’t need to have any FPS higher than that for my needs. I don’t care about benchmarks or graphic scores. Give me 60-65 on ultra settings on 1440p and I am good to go.
Reviews are good but I needed to see it myself and using my computer. These reviewers always have the top of the line hardware and they benchmark it in open cases which is not realistic.

 

My sig is outdated, I havent updated it, currently not using the AGA because for me on 1440P the 1070 is sufficient. I played around with cards of family members. A 2080 was quite the jump but not worth the money. Flight and Racing sims tend to be very unoptimized unfortunately and tend to tank performance. Similar to Arma3 which does refuses to run well in modern hardware and doesnt even make use of all the power available. Luckily in our units the 1070 and 1080s perform quite favorable to the desktop versions (my 1070 laptop scores almost identical to my old EVGA 1070GTX FTW which I sold).

The 7820HK can easily run at 4.2 to 4.3 GHZ if you have the cooling settled. In that case it performs similar to the desktop 7700K without overclocks.

In mainstream games such as BF5, Destiny 2, AC origins I havent seen any CPU bottlenecking. AC Odyssey however I did but that games doesnt run well on 8 core ryzens as well. DX12 also lowers the CPU calls so in games which support it properly can have performance gains too.

 

In my case all I needed to game at Ultra 1440p is a 1080 Ti and I agonized over the decision to save $$$ going that route vs investing in RTX/DLSS for future-proofing. The other issue is a 2080 is just a bad investment, barely able to keep up with a 1080 Ti so that was just completely off the table. So for me it was either 1080 Ti and upgrade my ENTIRE laptop DTR in a year or 2 or get the 2080 Ti and be game-proofed for twice as long (even with a relatively weak CPU) AND benefit from whatever neat-o RTX/DLSS implementations developers send down the pipe. The other benefit is when I DO upgrade to a new DTR laptop, I'm all set with the fastest GPU available or if I decide to go back to building my own tower setup (which is likely), I've got the most expensive component already on hand. =)
EDIT - oh the other thing is I was planning all this well ahead of time so watched Black Friday sales like a hawk and managed to get my 2080 Ti for under 1k so it really was a no-brainer for me.

 

im sending my 2080 ti back. win 10 keeps forcing its own crappy driver and nerfing the performance. my aw 17 r5 1080 is out performing it on 3dmark! rtx 2080 ti = 6435, 1080 in aw17 = 7372, 1080ti in aga = 8785.

iv tried to force it to stop updating using the hwid but it still does it.

gtx 1080 ti is back in the aga!

 

aw tech support tried for 2.5 hours to work around using ddu etc, nothing works.

1st world problems!

 

The AGA has really changed the way I evaluate laptops now since I feel pretty much zero pressure/need to upgrade. Also, a new GPU for the AGA is cheaper, easier, and more valuable from a resale standpoint than a new laptop all together. I have had my 15 R3 for over 2 years now, far and away the longest I have had a laptop - and my only complaint is that it is a little large for my backpack. Other than that I am really happy with it, and the AGA is a big part of that.

Also for those considering the AGA but worried about larger cards fitting - mod the hell out of it. It is a relatively cheap part (like $170 on amazon?). Who cares about the AGA warranty......

 

That sucks, the 2080 Ti is a great pairing with the AGA even with a 7th gen CPU. That's a really weird problem, so even using GeForce Experience to auto-update the drivers it still reverts back to generic crap drivers?

 

Agree on all points and hack it to bits, I'm pretty mod-shy but this AGA is so shoddy an enclosure I had zero qualms about taking a drill and dremel to it, easy!

 

I was not PLANNING to mod mine into a desktop case, but opening it one time the cheap plastic front end completely fell apart. The hinge was no longer attached to the base, so figured, screw it. The plastic bracing where the threads were to hold down the hinge ALL broke loose at once. It is actually a very poor/cheap design. But the PCB works great, and that is really all I cared about and all I need for it to be functional

 

Something is not right with your machine. I have never heard of 1080ti outperforming 2080ti.

The GPU drivers I have installed remains exactly the same until I decide I want to change it to newer ones or I manually revert to older Nivdia drivers. It is NEVER forced.

 

Exactly. 170 bucks I don’t really care about warranty. It’s all about having it functional and if you have to modify it so be it

 

Does anyone know or can they guess, the performance difference between an RTX 2060 Max-Q and an AGA with a 2080 when both are powering the internal screen?

I know the AGA takes a performance hit when powering the internal screen and you need an external monitor to get the best out of it.

 

It was so incredibly hard to find a decent looking backpack for my AW15R3 with enough space. the footprint is just so weird of it, even though the laptop is fairly thin.

BUt yeah the AGA is great to have. It extended the life of my older AW15R2 quite a bit and I feel no need for a separate desktop. Currently I dont have a card it it. Going to buy one again where there is truly a better offering to replace my internal 1070.

 

I just bought an Everki Titan after my third SwissGear Ibex started falling apart haha

When a backpack manufacturer says 17" laptop, they need to understand what a real laptop is and not a 17" MacBook.....

 

a bit too big for my taste.That one is huge. Good quality though.

 

I've been carrying 17" DTR laptops around for the past 12 years and I'd needed a new bag every two years .... until I bought an Everki. I've had the current one for 6 years and it still looks like new.

 

I found most of what I needed to know for a notebookcheck article.

 

It is big for sure. But so was my Ibex, the Titan is only a little taller. Part of my backpack requirement is the ability to carry 2 laptops, power supplies, and other stuff comfortably. That narrows down the field very quickly.

And to keep it relevant here, could likely fit an AGA in there too

 

So, how about sharing this information? Thanks.

 

Lol. Not a problem. https://www.notebookcheck.net/We-be...e-desktop-RTX-2080-and-GTX-1080.402036.0.html