The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
How To: Start your Alienware laptop with AGA plugged in and powered. Once fully into Windows, pull the power to the AGA and restart the laptop. As soon as the Alienware splash screen comes on plug the power back in for the AGA. MUST be done before the spinning animation starts!
From the post in the AGA thread to a reddit article I was able to get my M15 R2 fully and consistently up and running with a new 3080. My M15 is an R2 with the 9980HK and 2080MQ. The 3080 is a Dell / Alienware card out of my R11. Sorry, don't have other cards to test to ensure if this works for all cards, hopefully this works for all laptops and all 3080's!
I'm seeing some nice improvements over my 2080MQ: 130% improvement at 4K in Division 2, and only -4.2% slower than my R11 with 3080. Similarly in Shadow of the Tomb Raider seeing 114% improvement at 4K, and -9.4% slower than my R11. R11 equipped with 10700KF
Agree the 1080 and to a lesser degree 1440 are bottlenecked, but I’m wondering if it’s the 4x PCIE for the AGA rather than the CPU? 9980HK is no slouch.
Agree 100%. Multiple interactions with Dell / Alienware in 2020 and they dropped the ball pretty much every time. Been a month since my last order, which they already charged for, and they have lost the order.
I only did the AGA testing for the community, I have no need to run the AGA since my R11 does my main gaming, and the 2080 MQ does everything fine at 1080p.
I predict my current M15 R2 and my R11 will be my final Alienwares. Believe I’ve owned 10 now. They think too highly of themselves and don’t listen to users. The fact that we as a community have to figure this stuff like the AGA out on our own tells us all we need to know. All they care about is bottom line, not making top end machines, or offering great support.
They need to innovate and stop saving a nickel and dime here and there that would drastically improve performance.
Top of mind things needing to change:
Real thermal paste - I’ve repasted all of my systems in the last 5 years and experienced significant temperature improvements. A multi billion $ corporation knows of the improvements but chooses to not implement. Ridiculous
Soldered RAM?! - baffles the mind why my M15R2 has soldered RAM
Low speed RAM - both my R11 and M15 have crap RAM. I upgraded the R11 RAM on my own because the stock upgrades were low quality and expensive. If I can buy on my own 3200 C14 and pay half as much as their 3200 C18 there is a problem there.
Quality - I need quality from $2k-$3k systems. My Ethernet port shouldn’t pop off and then the support rep blame me for a truly crap design. Simply removing a cable should not make a $3k laptop break. Ever.
Support - Was shocked when I was asked TO SEND IN MY LAPTOP for the Ethernet port problem above. Seriously. Just send me the new bottom panel and I’m set. Sending in would have cost them hundreds in two shipping costs plus tech time, not to mention the inconvenience to me.
Consistent answers - my R11 was supposed to included a free game. Got the royal run around for DAYS trying to get my game. Different answer each time, call this department, call that department. It will be emailed to you, it is in your locker, you didn’t qualify, sales didn’t add it to your order, we ran out of codes, etc. All answers I received btw. No one owned the issue till I got irate. 8+ interactions required.
Fix the thermals! No, regardless of what their call center scripts say 100c is not ok. A nice system shouldn’t sound like a wind tunnel to keep temps at 90c. Fixing the thermal paste problems will help.
Software / Bloatware - for the love I don’t want 12 Dell applications on my new computer that are required for everything to work properly!
-End rant-
Happy New Years and hoping Alienware becomes a quality gaming brand again but think that will be 2022-2023 at the earliest.
I couldn't agree more. I'm in a similar boat regarding Alienware. Would just add the soldered WiFi and inverted mobo to the list of recent disappointments.
Thanks for the very useful 3080 AGA tests. Were you using the stock PSU?
Regarding the AGA compatibility, to be fair, the 3080 cards are much bigger than 2080 cards so it's hard to find models which fit well (apart from the FE and said alienware card which they don't sell separately, unfortunately).
Regarding the m15 temperatures, yes, they're too high, but the main issue here are Intel CPUs which are still made in 14nm and have much too high TDP values. Sure, they should have put a better cooling system and paste then, but at least they run the system at full potential and you can limit it for better noise and temperatures if you wish to do so. Razer for example gimps the power limits and thus achieves better noise and temperatures for a noticeable decrease in performance in multi core tests.
The soldered ram is completely embarrassing, though.
Yes, stock PSU. Had a 1000w Seasonic available if there was instability but it was fine.
Main thermal issue with the M15R2 is the paste, surprisingly the heat sink can dissipate 100+ watts. Mine runs full clocks stably. Being winter here in California and sitting on a cooling fan don’t think I broke 70c for these AGA tests.
I have a different method to get an ASUS TUF 3080 OC working with my Alienware 15 R3 AW15R3 i7-7820HK NVIDIA 1070 (g-sync version) built in. I am using the stock AGA power supply with the AGA case open.
Boot with the graphics amplifier plugged in and powered.
Load up device manager (Will see the usual code 31 error in device manager).
Unplug the AGA data cable (NOT the AGA power cable) and wait for the 3080 to disappear from device manager. Note: I have to unplug the laptop power cable on my laptop to get the AGA cable unplugged just because the two ports are right next to each other (put the laptop power back in after the AGA cable is disconnected)
Plug the AGA data cable back in. IMPORTANT: The lights on the cable should not come on. If they do unplug the cable again, wait a few seconds and plug it in again. I've only had to unplug again a few times to get the lights to stay off.
In device manager select scan for hardware changes (either under the Action menu or by right clicking). Windows will find the 3080 with error code 18 (drivers must be reinstalled). Just wait a few more seconds and windows will apply the driver and the 3080 will be fully working.
To get the above method to work I ended up using DDU from Guru3D to remove all NVIDIA drivers. Windows automatically installed some basic 1070 drivers on the next boot. I then installed the DESKTOP 460.89 windows 10 64 bit international drivers. The first time I got it working it took windows a long time to apply the drivers to the card in step 5 (~around 30 seconds). After the first time it only takes a few seconds.
When using the laptop with the AGA windows does not show the sleep and hibernate options. This could be due to the desktop drivers I used but since it works now I don't want to mess with it any more. After a reboot without the AGA the power options come back.
This method works for me every time. I couldn't get any of the methods that required shutting off the power to the AGA to work for me.
So I would assume after the 3080 is working you would leave the computer in a sleep or hibernate mode because once you shut off computer you would have to do all those steps again which would be a PITA. DELL needs to step up and
In my case there is no sleep or hibernate option when using the AGA most likely because I used the desktop drivers. This is the first time I've used the AGA but I think you have to reboot every time you connect the AGA cable even if the cards are supported (If someone with experience with older cards wants to clarify).
Very unhappy that Dell didn't get this to work for us. (stupid horse again, sorry)
Clearly just a mild bump up in the PSU would insure no possible issues and yield many satisfied customers.
Thanks for showing us how it works.
Looking at the massive improvements in TB3 eGPU performance in Tiger Lake reported by Jarrod, AGA would have become less relevant even if updated. Still it would have been great to have both a top notch AGA of our dreams AND TB3 (which can be used to connect a bunch of other useful devices such as external NVME drives, or a second eGPU).
Yes, it seems to be sorted now that Nvidia has provided proper driver support. I have tested my 3080 in the AGA and it worked flawlessly, and others have tested the 3070 and 3090 as well without issue. It should work just like any other GPU now. Keep in mind the only officially supported GPU's are the 3060 and 3070, so technically the 3080 / 3090 are still not officially supported, but they do work.
Definitely getting close to power limits since the stock AGA PSU is only ~450W IIRC and Dell recommends GPUs under 375. With the power spikes of the 3080 and 3090s known and noted, the crappy PSU in the AGA might be worth upgrading, especially if someone is running a partner card with higher power limits.
Great that it is easily working now though! I would love to see side by side bench marks between desktop performance vs different AW machines with AGAs.
Out of interest, do you happen to have any Benchmarks for the AGA running the 3080? I purchased the Alienware 51m R2 with the AGA being a big selling point, but then they killed the product off and removed it from the store before it had arrived.
I'm wondering if it will be a significant enough improvement for me to invest so much money into (Since GPU's are worth their weight in gold now).
I didn't test it on my A51m, only on my 17R4, and then only to basically see that it was working. The GPU is my main desktop GPU so I only pulled it out to check to see that it was working, then it went back into my tower.
Not a bad GPU score, it's 4,000 better than my 51m R2's internal 2080 Super, I wonder if it a better CPU would get it to be comparable to the 20,000 desktop benchmarks have achieved. Thanks for the info.
More then likely, I would think the 7820hk is probably really holding it back. I could put it back in and hook up the AGA to my external display, I just have not had the time. This weekend is a write off, but maybe i will try to get to it next week on my days off. My desktop has the same CPU as my 51m, so my scores from there would probably be pretty close to what my 51m would score. It would be a little lower just because it's not running quite as high, but shouldn't be to far off.
Awesome man, out of interest have you updated your 51m to the 1.7.0 bios released 16 March 2021? I'm wondering if it's gonna disable under/overclocking or cause any issues. I'm a bit wary since a BIOS update removed both over and underclocking from my G5.
I have the 51m R1, not the R2. As of the most recent BIOS I still have undervolting, BUT, the last BIOS I tried severly degraded my CPU performance thanks to more spectre patches, so I am sitting on 1.7.3 and am not moving from there ever again. There was a pretty massive CPU lose going to the newer BIOS's.
What am I doing wrong? Hooking up a 3070 to this graphics amplifier and this is what I get. I have the latest Nvidia drivers installed.
Edit: Nevermind, think I figured it out. Had to bring up Windows Update and search for new updates and it pulled in drivers..then did a restart. Showing up now correctly in Device Manager.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
