Alienware Graphics Amplifier stuck was working perfectly, now suddenly getting caught in a boot loop

I recently received the AGA from a family member for christmas. I hooked it up and worked it excellently. However, about two days ago I plugged it in and launched it, only to be met with a boot loop. For some with similar problems, it launches sooner or later, but mine never does. I have tried DDU, a different power supply, and a different GPU to no avail. When I plug it in while the laptop is already running, I get the request to restart, only to once again be met with a boot loop. The amplifier also seems to launch when there is no card in the slot, but the alien logo on the front never lights up in any case. My laptop is an Alienware 15 with an i5-4210h, GTX 965M 2gb, 16gb of crucial DDR3L Ram, and a 750GB crucial ssd. Any suggestions?

 

I can't help you fix the problem but with this CPU Graphics amplifier is useless.

 

Try a different windows isntallation to be sure. on a different drive for example. But it might be possible that your cable is faulty.

 

What makes you say that?

 

Isn't it kind of weird that the cable detects it when I plug it in though?

 

Not really if you consider it has a lot of wires inside. If one is faulty it can glitch the whole system.

 

Because every gpu you put into AGA will be heavily bottlenecked by your cpu.

 

Of course it's not "useless", it's a dual core i5 with HT and base frequency of 2.9 with core boost up to 3.4 for both cores. Those numbers are pretty decent as far as laptops go (comparable to frequencies you'd get with e.g. i7-6700hq) and extra two cores probably won't make a huge impact in non-CPU intensive games, but it also depends on the resolution. I'd expect in most cases that a bigger performance hit would come from the limits of the external graphics tech itself rather than the weaker CPU performance.

Edit: Here, there are some reviews with the same CPU, just to show the potential is there to put out some decent numbers, e.g.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2907...bo-boosts-a-laptop-with-titan-x-graphics.html

Though, I did see some recommendation on the Alienware forums that dual-core AMP users might be better off with Nvidia cards.

 

Lol. Was there any AAA game in 2016 that didn't had quad-core CPU as minimum?

 

LOL at yourself unless you actually have some arguments to prove that the CPU is "useless", like this fantasy list of AAA games from 2016 which won't run on OP's CPU?

 

Okay.

Dishonored 2, Witcher 3, DOOM, Tom clancy'ss the division, Watch Dogs 2 ETC ETC

Seriously you made my day LOL. You probably have same cpu and you want (need) to think it's powerful. No it's not. Have a good day sir xD

 

Some of those are rather CPU intensive, yes, but all the listed games can in fact be run on that CPU; just how well they'd run depends on the game, the resolution, the level of detail and the graphics card used in the amplifier and those details were not provided by the OP.

 

No, they can't run on that CPU unless you like 20-fps.

 

Doom, the division and watch dogs all run perfectly fine on a dual core with HT. The witcher 3 for example a bit bottlenecked but with a nice gpu still very decent framerates.