[Review] Alienware 15 and Alienware Graphic Amplifier with GTX 1080

The Alienware 15 can be seen as a balance solution between the Alienware 13 and its big brother, the Alienware 17. While using the same four cores, powerful chip found in the 17, it is lighter and more compact.

Design

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The Alienware 15 is every inch a gaming rig, with a chunky design measuring 1.34 by 15.2 by 10.65 inches (HWD) and accented with glowing lights on the logo, lid and chassis. (You can set these lights to almost any color you want in the settings.) The 1.34-inch thickness and 7.1-pound weight of the chassis stands in stark contrast to other gaming laptops, which have emphasized portability with slim and light designs, such as the Razer Blade (2015), which is only 0.7-inch thick and 4.47 pounds. Instead, Alienware focused on performance, and like the MSI GE62 Apache, that means building the chassis around powerful hardware and cooling fans.

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One add-on product which was introduced along with the laptop is the Alienware Graphic Amplifier, which turbocharge the laptop with a desktop – class graphic card through a Pcie3.0 port. One downside, however, you’ll lose the portability of the Alienware 15 when using the Amplifier.

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Alienware’s external graphic dock solution.​

Screen

The laptop reviewed today is equipped with a 4K (3820 x 2160 ), 15 inch display, with a brightness level of 300nits. Everything from this screen is sharp, colorful and bright. The screen is also IPS, which delivers a 178 degree field of view, suitable for Netflixing with your beloved one.

The screen when playing a 4K video.​

Performance.

Test setup​

Test machine spec:
- Intel Core i7 6700HQ ( 2.6Ghz, 3.5 when turboboost )
- 2 x Samsung 950 Pro 512Gb.
- 32Gb of G-skill Ripjaws DDR4 Ram.
- Nvidia GTX 1080 Founder’s Edition ( Overclocked to 2.1Ghz ).
- Alienware Graphic Amplifier.

A look inside the machine, quite neat cable management.


Test Spec.​

The results show the extreme powerful power of the Alienware 15 when paired with the Alienware Graphic Amplifier, more than doubling the graphic score of the Acer Predator 17 and even surpassing the big Titan, MSI GT80

1. Firestrike

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Firestrike score of the Alienware 15, the graphic score is 23162.



Firestrike score of Acer Predator 17, graphic score is 10.939.​

Firestrike score of the MSI GT80 Titan. Graphic score is 18.279​

- Cinebench

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Cinebench.​

2. Game Benchmarking ( All title benchmarked at 1080p, maxed out including anti-aliasing )

The Witcher 3 (Vsync ON ) :

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Rise of the Tomb Raider (DirectX 12).

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GTA V:

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Assassin's Creed Unity ( Vsync ON )

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Dragon Age Inquisition

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Farcry Primal

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Crysis 3

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DOOM 2016, FPS is 181.

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Hitman 2016

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Metal Gear Solid V - The Phantom Pain.

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Just Cause 3

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Comparing the performance to a desktop setup: When looking at the review of the MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X by the folks at Guru3d here, using the GTX 1080 through the Alienware Graphic Amplifier resulted in an approximately 3% performance drop ( Graphic Score on desktop is 23903, graphic score using the Alienware Graphic Amplifier is 23162).


Read/Write speed: Equipped with two Samsung 950 Pro SSD, one of the fastest consumer SSD on Earth, it is no surprise that the Alienware 15 nailed the CrystalDiskMark SSD test, delivering ( almost ) the fastest speed on a notebook.

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Temperature: Surprisingly cool with the maximum temperature of the GPU is 76C and 60C with the CPU, this is due to the internal GPU (GTX 980M) is turned off when using the Amplifier. Therefore both internal fan can cool the laptop more effectively.

Conclusion: Combining amazing temperature with excellent performance, Alienware 15 and Alienware Graphic Amplifier can easily beat every other laptop and most desktop. Taking the performance crown of single – GPU laptop. There are downsides, however, one should sacrifice the portability of the laptop when using the external docking solution. As well as that is the cost, with the total setup reviewed costing around 3600GBP, not a lot of people can afford it, but it’s nice to know that such machine exist, bringing extreme performance.

P/s: while there're reports that some users are having problems with the GTX 1080 and the Alienware Graphic Amplifier, i didn't encountered any. The BIOS i'm using is 1.2.8.

Author: Danny

 

great review. are the 950 Pros in raid 0?

 

Hello there, Im a fellow alienware 15 r2 owner with graphic amplifier and gtx 1080, i read what you went through to make the graphic card work, and im glad it worked with you. Mine is working too on latest nvidia desktop driver 368.39 and its very fast performer . However I noticed that gpu z is reading the pci express speed as 3.0 x 2 instead of pci express 3.0 x4 which is slower than alienware advertised for the link speed. if it is not a lot to ask ,Kindly check for me your alienware 15 connection speed with the graphic amplifier using gpuz and if you can get back to me i will be thankfull, best regards,

 

Hi,
The speed of my GTX 1080 with the Amp is Pcie3.0 x4. I recommend reflash to BIOS 1.2.8. Also, resitting the GPU might do the trick.
Cheers

 

Did you test with internal or external display?

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

 

That's not RAID 0. The sequential write speed almost doubles in RAID 0. 950 PRO SSD's are guaranteed for 400TB of writes so RAID 1 is a waste of money. RAID 0 guarantees 800TB write to the volume.

With the AGA attached you can disable the on-board Nvidea card to free up PCI bandwidth. The below score was with increased queue depth and the Nvidea card disabled, with two 950 PRO in RAID 0.

 

Can you do a review of the same system but at 4K resolutions as 980m can run 1080p maxed AFAIK

 

980m runs 4k in my 17 R3.

 

Hi,

I'm thinking to buy alienware 17 r3 with gtx980m but i cant decide about the screen 4k or 1080p,

Do you have a benchmark test gtx1080 to using the screen 4k on alienware not using the external?

if the fps is good on internal 4k screen then i probably buy the alienware 17 r3 with gtx980m 4k screen.

 

The 980M is not enough to run games on a good framerate at 4K. The 1080GTX on a desktop is barely enough for that.

 

Hi rinneh,

"In 4K, all three cards passed with flying colours, but the GTX 1080 was once again a standout performer, managing an average frame rate above the magic 60fps"

http://www.trustedreviews.com/nvidi...-performance-benchmarks-and-conclusion-page-2

 

Thanks for the reply. but if the gtx1080 is used to internal display on Alienware 4k screen not on the external monitor is the framerate will be good?

 

Hi kris_clores,

Here's something.

"Edit 4: I don't have an external 4k monitor. I bought the GTX 1080 to drive my oculus rift. When I run the benchmarks, it is run on the laptop's 4k display. The performance of the card is about 1/3 when driving the internal graphics card. I am pretty sure it will beat the 4k gaming PC requirements when driving an external monitor. Preliminary benchmarks driving the internal laptop's 4k monitor is here"

https://m.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/4jm0pv/alienware_amplifier_with_gtx_1080/

 

There is already a thread where you should be asking this question, the AGA owners thread. If anyone knows the answer it will be someone on there.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...hmark-thread-all-13-15-and-17.770323/page-159

 

thanks for the link and info....

 

did you test with latest bios 1.2.14 ?

 

Thank you for your reply, i wish i saw your reply earlier, coz i found about bios downgrade after a lot of trials and reading in forums about better stability on the bios 1.2.2 and it turned out that it solved also the pci bus speed and bios 1.2.8 did work as u mentioned. Alienware gave me a headache as their generic reply is to upgrade the bios to 1.2.14 to solve the issue even thought i informed them that i was on 1.2.14. Alienware tech and engineers definitely do not care about any solution because after i found the solution of my issue I tried to communicate with them maybe they work on their new bios and see what they did wrong, however no use! they live in denial , check the link to have an idea what we are facing with alienware support, note that i already called them a day before they posted the folowing info and tried to explain them how i solved my issue.. http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/SLN302343
Thank you again, regards

 

hi, I have the same issue, I only have PCIe 2x 3.0 when it works, sometimes even PCIe 1x, are you using external display or the laptop screen?

 

Hi, same boat, im on bios 14 but it did nothing, should I try 1.2.8 or even earlier?

 

Nope, 1.2.8 is the golden one.