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

Ok so I can still use DSR or VSR and freesync/G-sync as long as my external display is hooked up to the AGA, but no-go if I use my laptop display or plug a monitor into my laptop?

If so, can definitely live with that.

 

Pretty much. Don't know about DSR, though, as I never got it working on any of my computers.

 

Question on drivers. If I have the notebook driver installed what happens when I plug in an amp with a Titan or something, install the desktop drivers too?

 

Nope. You only need one set of drivers, and the mobile drivers are the recommended ones. The laptop will detect the TITAN just fine.

 

So about to give the Graphics amplifier a second go around. Anything in particular I need to know with any recent drivers updates? Will be using an Alienware 15 R2 and gtx 980ti.

 

anyone know if a corsair CX500M would fit in the graphics amplifier?

 

86mm (H) x 150mm (W) x 140mm (W)

 

Looks like it's been confirmed that the Razer Core external GPU setup won't be locked down to just the Razer Stealth, guess I'll wait for this thing since it uses USB-C. Out before mid-2016.

 

Does anyone have control of alienware graphics amplifier in their bios? I dont seem to have it. I have 1.2.2 bios and tried the new one also. Both have nothing for graphics amp in bios

 

i probably jumped the gun on the AGA for the AW 15 R2, but hey, im' OCD and it has the port for it which woudl be empty so YOLO

 

What kind of control are you looking for? In the early 2015 laptops, there was a section for the Graphics Amplifier for overclocking the CPU and RAM.

 

Sweet! thank you

 

that's pretty abysmal I would check what you have running. My boot time is 5 seconds on win 10

 

Hey all anyone tell me if AGA port does audio also, as in if I hook up monitor with audio out with hdmi will I get sound to my speakers

 

No, but it should be possible, through Windows Sound settings, to make the laptop's speakers the default ones as to have sound come from there.
This also happens when you connect an audio-less monitor to the laptop.

 

cool I just trying to leave as much set up on bench as I can and going to get some new monitors soon

 

I've connected my Display via DisplayPort and i can get sound out of the speaker from it..

 

This is what I was looking for but I cant find anything

 

good to know I'll pick up monitors with the option and see how I go

 

Imagine if you could SLI with graphics amp and razer core both plugged in. Taking things to new extremes.

 

It would be cool, but I assume there would be a good bit of latency though.

 

I've been using AGA as a USB dock (with 980 Ti turned off) when I'm not gaming.
Is there any way to turn it back on without having to unplug and plug it back in?
The buttons on the cable and the keyboard only seem to work for turning it off.

 

confirmed. I just bought a
Benq 27" RL2755HM connected with hdmi and speakers into the 3.5mm jack and glorious sound ensued.

 

Is any of you guys with an 980ti currently playing Rise Of The Tomb Raider?

I'm facing some issues with that game. The game looks awesome, the overall performance is great, no GPU limitation, no CPU limitation... everything seems fine but in some areas I'm having frame drops to about 50fps. Not too bad - I know.... but why the f*** is my system using only 6 GB out of my 16 GB Ram on the one hand and utilizing a over 12GB for swapping?! That's the only reason I find for the frame drops... but I have no idea how to get rid of it.
Do you guys have?

 

If you are only using 6GB out of 16GB, try turning off the Windows pagefile, by setting "no page file" on all drives.

Reboot, and see if that makes a difference

If nothing else you have regained 12GB of space on your boot SSD.

Spoiler

For extra credit, lose the hiberfil.sys file by turning off hibernation, which will also improve boot / shutdown times by moving from hybrid boot/shutdown to real boot/shutdown. You just saved 16GB of space (if you have 16GB real RAM).

In a cmd Window Run As Administrator <== must do this

powercfg /h off

 

If anyone is wondering, you CAN install AIO/HYBRID cards in your AGA with a little work. There's tons of space, and you can get rid of the atrocious front fan and still retain excellent cooling.

I fit my GTX980 Hybrid into my AGA today.
http://imgur.com/QtkdkSW

 

More angle shots please! Also with how much smaller pascal cards will be, that'll be even more room in the AGA. Also might I recommend replacing the stock fan with a noctua? Those things are freakin quiet.

 

Here's more pictures of it and my whole setup!

http://i.imgur.com/nwSJzsF.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/U4WfoLw.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/sKpTrPU.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/yXOrVC1.jpg

 

Sweet, I can see how its set up in the amp much more clearly in these pics. Do you have the fan sucking air in or blowing out? Can totally make it much more quiet by using noctua fans in the front and on the radiator.

 

Do you have more pics? I have evga (one in sig) and want to make it hybrid

 

I get the same issue where it drops sometimes to 50fps. Annoying. Havent figured out why tho. I havent looked at the ram. Let me know if you figure anything out.

And how did u work it out to being ur ram?

 

The card is blower style and exhausts most of the hot air out the rear. The Blower fan and the Rad fan pull more than enough cool air from the sides of the AGA. Temps look very good even under load so I don't think i'll be installing another fan in the oem fans place.

 

Did you convert your card to hybrid or did you buy it like that? I want that kit on mine but not sure if its compatible. Card in my sig

 

From time to time I'm monitoring my system with MSI Afterburner. You can choose which values you want to see on the overlay.

Thanks to hmscott for the idea. I tried to deactivate the pagefile. It resulted in higher ram usage but also uncountable crashes. Afterwards I tried to limit the pagefile to 8gb -> same ram usage, but framedrops down to 41-42 fps. After setting it back to the previous settings I had the best results... some framedrops down to 50fps, but as I mentioned before... It's not toooooo bad I think its just the way ROTTR uses ram.

 

Really, crashes without the pagefile enabled? That's very unusual, as in it's not happened to me ever.

Is it a BSOD system crash, or a game crash - system stays running, or a display driver crash?

The worst issue I ran across was with very old versions of Photoshop that required a small pagefile - otherwise it wouldn't run.

How much memory is the game using? Try using hwinfo64 with logging on to find the memory usage just before the crash - maybe bump up the logging interval to sub 1s sampling.

You said you have 16GB, there should be no way that the game uses that much.

The game may have taken the pagefile into it's calculations for memory allocation, and is using it specifically - very weird

You might try uninstalling the game, turn off pagefile, reboot, and then reinstall the game.

You might need to use a tool like iobit uninstall to track the files left after the game uninstaller finishes - quite often they leave behind config files or registry entries, an uninstaller like iobit can find and remove them - it will pop up after the game uninstaller and offer to remove a list of files it finds, if any.

Keep debugging, you should be able to run without a pagefile with 16GB of memory, as long as you don't exceed 16GB.

 

The game crashed - the system was running stable. It used about 10-12gb ram before crashing. But Afterburner recognized a pagefile usage although it was disabled. I'm not exactly sure why... I'll give it another try in the evening.
Thanks for your help, hmscott.

 

I have loaded things up very close to the end of memory, and apps exit with memory errors, so that's what this sounds like the app really is using up all the memory - along with whatever else is running.

You need more memory

When you come across a situation where the app is digging into the pagefile during runtime, you are going to get lags and snags in performance as the app data is swapped to/from disk.

A pagefile will help you run apps larger than real memory but you pay a performance penalty, sometimes too great to run.

At that point you need to get more memory.

I have to look back in the posts, to find out what game you are using. Most games don't use that much memory - it's only part of the memory used - the rest is in the GPU VRAM.

Wow, Rise Of The Tomb Raider is doing this? Interesting. I wonder if there is an option to disable to reduce memory load just a bit. If you are using 12GB of memory for the game thats 2x-3x-4x what I normally see in use when running games.

Given the OS and other tools running, another 4GB sounds about right, you are bouncing off the top of that 16GB.

Can you add another 8GB easily?

Or, maybe even remove 8GB... strange that this article says running Very High textures consumed 4.5GB on an 8GB system, causing stuttering, and reducing textures to High fixed that, reducing memory usage of the game to 2.5GB.
http://www.dsogaming.com/pc-performance-analyses/rise-of-the-tomb-raider-pc-performance-analysis/

Maybe the game has a bug that is allocating too much memory? It sounds like depending on the memory available the game will consume even more memory. Or, are you running Ultra High Textures? I don't have the game, so I can't check.

Here is another report of RAM allocation problems, on a 16GB system this time:
http://www.destructoid.com/pc-port-report-rise-of-the-tomb-raider-336747.phtml

"Sometimes it was using upwards of 6GB RAM, even in relatively quiet and simple areas. This is the only game I have ever had crash due to my PC running out of memory, and on 16GB of brand new RAM and a new video card with 4GB VRAM, that shouldn’t be happening. It especially shouldn’t be happening after only about an hour of play. I don't want to definitively say this is a memory leak, but it sure as hell feels like one."

 

Hey guys,

Just want to make sure, would this work well in the GA? https://www.massdrop.com/buy/msi-ge...otional 2016-02-11&utm_term=Daily Promotional

I can pick it up for $630.

 

It might be too tall to fit inside. Other than that, it would work.

 

So I managed to get a GTX 980 and did some early benchmarking with it + my 13 R2. I'll also post my early benchmarking of my GTX 960 too.
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/10916474 (GTX 960)
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/7506599 (GTX 960)
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/10931289 (GTX 980)
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/7549930 (GTX 980)
Aside from the GPU score increase (and possible driver/OS factors), PCIe 3.0x4 only makes a small difference compared to PCIe 2.0x4 with the AW13 laptops. Below are a couple comparisons with my GTX 960.
http://www.3dmark.com/compare/3dm11/10916474/3dm11/9966906
http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/7506599/fs/5182816

 

That's actually not that great for the firestrike on the 980... My 980m can get 9,000 with overclocking. Does the CPU have something to do with it possibly bottlenecking at all?

*edit* I got an 8332 with no overclocking...

 

Are you talking about the total score or the graphics score? The total scores on 3DMark will always be held back by the CPU. I mean, I am using a dual-core CPU at 3 GHz with a high end GPU. The standard total score factors in all three scores (graphics, physics, and combined) that are calculated.
Keep in mind that the graphics score is not that far off from a score that isn't held back by the bandwidth or CPU. In graphics intensive games, the difference shouldn't be large. In CPU intensive games, the difference should more noticeable.

 

I was looking at the firestrike gpu sided score. I was going to maybe get a 980 for my amplifier but seeing as its just about as good as the 980m I already have, I would be much better to get a ti or wait for pascal.

 

As long as the PCB on your card is a reference design, the hybrid kit should fit. and it looks like your card is a reference design PCB. can always check on this site

http://www.coolingconfigurator.com/

 

Just bought an AGA and GPU as a stop gap to see what's available towards the end of the year. Paid $323 total shipped for a used AGA from ebay and used AMD 290. Once overclocked I think I should be set til the end of the year. I'm not spoiled by high FPS yet so I'll be fine with 30fps 4k whenever I get a monitor later.

 

I have the right pcb under the stock cooler BUT apparently you have to use parts of the reference gpu stock cooler with the hybrid kit to make it work?
Do you know what bits these are?? im told the blower fan and other bits?

 

can only assume it would be whatever the blower fan mounts on to the PCB, possibly heatsinks too.

below is the install manual for the hybrid kit. there's a plate that covers the top of the PCB that touches the memory along with other parts of the board that needs to be cooled. and there's a heatsink in the back part of the card too. definitely would need that plate.

http://www.evga.com/support/manuals/files/980_HYBRID_install_v3.pdf

 

Can anyone with an AMD card double check if VSR does or doesn't work when using the laptop display? I know it doesn't work with NVidia but maybe the AMD can work some magic (I know Optimus is the weak link here but you never know).

Oh wait...just forgot VSR/DSR will work if I plug my projector into the AGA, finally will be able to play Arkham Knight without jaggies in a week.

Edit: Here's a more challenging question for Radeon users, if I'm using an external display connected to the AGA, can I still use the integrated NVidia GPU as the PhysX processor?

 

Back when I had my R9 285, VSR only worked when using a display connected to it. The AMD control panel was very limited when using only the laptop's display, not showing any menus on changing resolutions or enabling VSR. It was essentially this (the left column). Sorry for the small image.

The Crimson drivers didn't make much of a difference.
I don't think Enduro (AMD's Optimus) allows VSR.

 

Thanks, I'm just lazy and really want DSR to work with my laptop screen so I can veg out as much as possible, but I guess if I "must" I'll game on the 110" screen.

(For those of you looking to game @1080p/60hz on a bigger screen, I can recommend the Optoma GT1080, or BenQ 1080/1085ST short throw projecter, ~5 feet throw distance to achieve over 100"+, and an "Elite Spectrum2 Screen" (motorized, from Amazon) all for under $1000)