Dell Using Reduced Core RTX 3070 in Alienware m15 R5?

[REAVER117]

I posted this on Reddit, but figured I'd put some feelers out here. For the Alienware m15 R5 it seems like Dell is using an RTX 3070 with only 4608 CUDA cores as opposed to the 5120 advertised by NVIDIA. Ray tracing (36) and Tensor cores (144) also seem to be reduced 10%.

 

I'd be interested to see if any other m15 R5 owners have the same configuration, as our sample size is small. 

 

 

UPDATE: Appears to be a VBIOS issue, flashing the m15 R4 3070 VBIOS reports the correct core count. Hopefully Dell will realize their (presumed) mistake and fix in a BIOS update.

 

Thanks @Britbloke for finding the thread and EepoSaurus at NotebookReview for the fix. 

 

Thanks everyone!

 

[Energycore]

Huh.

 

Honestly, wouldn't surprise me considering Dell is number 1 shadiest and sleaziest OEM. Seriously, you should watch their prebuilts get reviewed.

 

I hope this thread gets some traction so we can figure out what's up with your laptop's 3070. I don't know much about gaming laptops though.

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-rtx-3070-mobile.c3712 This is what it should be right? 5120 shaders. Interesting.

[porina]

Just checked my Lenovo 3070 Laptop version, and that has the higher count. So the Dell being lower is certainly interesting. Have to wonder if this is something Dell did by themselves, or are nvidia silently selling cut down 3070's that might be better called a 3069 for example - it is still much closer to a mobile 3070 than mobile 3060.

 

Can you find out what power limit that 3070 runs to?

[REAVER117]

10 minutes ago, Energycore said:

Huh.

 

Honestly, wouldn't surprise me considering Dell is number 1 shadiest and sleaziest OEM. Seriously, you should watch their prebuilts get reviewed.

 

I hope this thread gets some traction so we can figure out what's up with your laptop's 3070. I don't know much about gaming laptops though.

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-rtx-3070-mobile.c3712 This is what it should be right? 5120 shaders. Interesting.

Yeah, that's right. Same on NVIDIA's site:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/gaming-laptops/

[REAVER117]

6 minutes ago, porina said:

Just checked my Lenovo 3070 Laptop version, and that has the higher count. So the Dell being lower is certainly interesting. Have to wonder if this is something Dell did by themselves, or are nvidia silently selling cut down 3070's that might be better called a 3069 for example - it is still much closer to a mobile 3070 than mobile 3060.

 

Can you find out what power limit that 3070 runs to?

115W+10W Dynamic Boost. 

[dizmo]

16 minutes ago, porina said:

Just checked my Lenovo 3070 Laptop version, and that has the higher count. So the Dell being lower is certainly interesting. Have to wonder if this is something Dell did by themselves, or are nvidia silently selling cut down 3070's that might be better called a 3069 for example - it is still much closer to a mobile 3070 than mobile 3060.

 

Can you find out what power limit that 3070 runs to?

Pretty sure they can't do it without Nvidia; they don't make the GPU cores. If it was VRAM amounts, sure. This sounds distinctively collabed.

[REAVER117]

4 minutes ago, dizmo said:

Pretty sure they can't do it without Nvidia; they don't make the GPU cores. If it was VRAM amounts, sure. This sounds distinctively collabed.

Assuming this isn't a VBIOS issue, I wonder if this configuration was intended to be a 3060 Ti Laptop card. Since the 3060 laptop is the full 3060 desktop they'd have to cut down a 3070 if they wanted to slot something between them. 

[porina]

12 minutes ago, REAVER117 said:

115W+10W Dynamic Boost. 

That's lower than my Lenovo at 130W. I was wondering if that was a power saving attempt, although simply reducing power limit would usually be better than turning off cores.

 

1 minute ago, dizmo said:

Pretty sure they can't do it without Nvidia; they don't make the GPU cores. If it was VRAM amounts, sure. This sounds distinctively collabed.

I get what you're saying. Don't know if for example Dell could customise the bios to say, don't turn on some cores for some reason I can't imagine. If power saving, just reducing limit should suffice and generally better.

 

If nvidia are doing this on the quiet, that would be the shadiest thing they've done in recent history. It can be imagined this is a way to harvest defect dies, but still calling it a 3070 without making it more obvious would be deceptive.

[REAVER117]

6 minutes ago, porina said:

That's lower than my Lenovo at 130W. I was wondering if that was a power saving attempt, although simply reducing power limit would usually be better than turning off cores.

 

I get what you're saying. Don't know if for example Dell could customise the bios to say, don't turn on some cores for some reason I can't imagine. If power saving, just reducing limit should suffice and generally better.

 

If nvidia are doing this on the quiet, that would be the shadiest thing they've done in recent history. It can be imagined this is a way to harvest defect dies, but still calling it a 3070 without making it more obvious would be deceptive.

Funny enough this would be the third mobile GPU built on the GA104, the 3080 Laptop is the full chip, 3070 is cut down to 5120 cores, then whatever this is cut to 4608.

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, REAVER117 said:

Funny enough this would be the third mobile GPU built on the GA104, the 3080 Laptop is the full chip, 3070 is cut down to 5120 cores, then whatever this is cut to 4608.

At the very least, I would try to return the product because you didn't get what you paid for

[REAVER117]

3 minutes ago, Energycore said:

At the very least, I would try to return the product because you didn't get what you paid for

Yeah, I'm within the return window. I was hoping to get to the bottom of this, I had assumed it was a software or maybe a VBIOS issue. Sounds like it's more widespread so I figured I'd try to get the word out. 

[dizmo]

14 minutes ago, REAVER117 said:

Assuming this isn't a VBIOS issue, I wonder if this configuration was intended to be a 3060 Ti Laptop card. Since the 3060 laptop is the full 3060 desktop they'd have to cut down a 3070 if they wanted to slot something between them. 

Maybe. How does it perform compared to a 3070 though?

12 minutes ago, porina said:

I get what you're saying. Don't know if for example Dell could customise the bios to say, don't turn on some cores for some reason I can't imagine. If power saving, just reducing limit should suffice and generally better.

 

If nvidia are doing this on the quiet, that would be the shadiest thing they've done in recent history. It can be imagined this is a way to harvest defect dies, but still calling it a 3070 without making it more obvious would be deceptive.

That wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. I could see it being for cooling perhaps, but you'd think they'd just get a lower TDP model.

[REAVER117]

Just now, dizmo said:

Maybe. How does it perform compared to a 3070 though?

That wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. I could see it being for cooling perhaps, but you'd think they'd just get a lower TDP model.

Roughly 10% lower than a similar TDP 3070. That's what kicked off my investigation. 

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, REAVER117 said:

Yeah, I'm within the return window. I was hoping to get to the bottom of this, I had assumed it was a software or maybe a VBIOS issue. Sounds like it's more widespread so I figured I'd try to get the word out. 

Nice! Do update us when you're able to return it.

 

I would use the return money to buy a gaming laptop from another company. Big names include MSI, ASUS, Lenovo etc. Or a desktop might give you better bang for buck depending on your use case. High power Gaming laptops are very heavy.

[REAVER117]

8 minutes ago, Energycore said:

Nice! Do update us when you're able to return it.

 

I would use the return money to buy a gaming laptop from another company. Big names include MSI, ASUS, Lenovo etc. Or a desktop might give you better bang for buck depending on your use case. High power Gaming laptops are very heavy.

I've already got a gaming desktop, but I've had my eye on the Legion 5 Pro. I'm a sucker for 16:10, unfortunately it's not available in Canada yet. But man is the mechanical keyboard on the m15 R5 great...

[Moonzy]

Sounds fishy...

Is there other GPU cores with the same characteristics?? A 3060M perhaps?

 

Maybe some media outlet like gamer Nexus would be interested in this device? Rather than returning it

[REAVER117]

4 hours ago, Moonzy said:

Sounds fishy...

Is there other GPU cores with the same characteristics?? A 3060M perhaps?

 

Maybe some media outlet like gamer Nexus would be interested in this device? Rather than returning it

As far as I can tell NVIDIA has no GPUs matching this configuration. From the responses I've seen so far all Alienware m15 R5's with an RTX 3070 have this core count. Seems like Dell is up to something, to no one's surprise. 

[Moonzy]

5 minutes ago, REAVER117 said:

As far as I can tell NVIDIA has no GPUs matching this configuration. From the responses I've seen so far all Alienware m15 R5's with an RTX 3070 have this core count. Seems like Dell is up to something, to no one's surprise. 

Hmm... I can't see Dell doing it alone tho, don't think they have the capabilities to manipulate the Die.

 

I wonder what's up now, here's to hoping the media covers this and reveal the truth

 

From what I read from your reddit post, the benchmark is also lower as a result, yes? So it's not just software false reporting issue(?)

[REAVER117]

5 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

Hmm... I can't see Dell doing it alone tho, don't think they have the capabilities to manipulate the Die.

 

I wonder what's up now, here's to hoping the media covers this and reveal the truth

 

From what I read from your reddit post, the benchmark is also lower as a result, yes? So it's not just software false reporting issue(?)

My guess is Dell pushed for a volume discount on some lower binned parts. Yes, it's hard to put an exact figure on the relative performance with differences in cooling and TDP, but around a 10% deficit seems accurate. 

[Moonzy]

@genexis_x might be interested in this, or might have some insights

[genexis_x]

Hmm this is the 1st time I heard about this. All 3070M should be with the same specs except for memory bandwidth (on Max-Q variants) and TGP. For reference, this is 3070M specs from Legion 5 Pro:

Could be just reading error of GPU-Z tho.

Edit: Seems like it's real - from another review

[REAVER117]

16 minutes ago, genexis_x said:

Hmm this is the 1st time I heard about this. All 3070M should be with the same specs except for memory bandwidth (on Max-Q variants) and TGP. For reference, this is 3070M specs from Legion 5 Pro:

Could be just reading error of GPU-Z tho.

Edit: Seems like it's real - from another review

NVIDIA info shows the same core count.