GTX 1080 ALIENWARE GRAPHICS AMPLIFIER

[KagePro]

I could buy the most expensive Alienware on sale right now, but should I wait for the new pascal line-up?

 

Will the new GTX 1080 work with the graphics amplifier?

 

Because if it works, would it be better just to buy the laptop now, the GA and then the 1080?

 

Please help

[Paralectic]

When contemplating purchasing Alienware you should always wait, wait for your brain to recover from doing such horrible thing.

I would wait for when a laptop becomes compatible with the Pascal release, and I'd buy from other brands.

[KagePro]

Thank you mate.

 

What brands would you suggest to wait for?

[Paralectic]

6 minutes ago, KagePro said:

Thank you mate.

 

What brands would you suggest to wait for?

Not really brand focused, but if you want a decent product Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, EVGA, and any common brand will have their offerings if you are looking into a laptop with an external Thunderbolt dock for a GPU.

Also, laptops with the mobile Pascal chips will come soon, Asus, MSI, Razer ( not a fan but w/e ), and build to order laptop companies will offer them for a relatively normal price.

I would get one with an i7, 16/32GB DDR4 and a 1080m ( or a desktop 1080, if they do the same as with the 980 )

[givingtnt]

Alienware

 

its just a phase

 

get an msi gt72 m8

[handymanshandle]

@KagePro WHY ALL THE CAPS IN THE TITLE?

Anyways, the others pretty much got your answer... Don't buy an Alienware. Asus, MSI, Gigabyte and Sager/Clevo have good options...

@D2ultima seems to be this forum's resident Clevo/Sager fanboy. Which Clevo/Sager are decent options but are a bit harder to shop for because you usually have to go to a specific site to get them. Amazon does carry some Sager laptops but not sure about Clevo. Sager basically just takes Clevo's designs and maybe alters it a little bit and then stamps their logo on it.

 

[ShadowCaptain]

There is nothing inherently wrong with the Alienware laptops that most would have you believe, and even their price isnt that bad compared to similar machines

 

However, the Graphics amplifier is not a good investment, for a start its only PCIe 4x not 16x like the Razer version and its proprietary to Alienware so cannot be used with anything else and may not be used on future AW laptops

Right now id wait for the new models, and look into a thunderbolt enclosore

[handymanshandle]

2 hours ago, ShadowCaptain said:

There is nothing inherently wrong with the Alienware laptops that most would have you believe, and even their price isnt that bad compared to similar machines

 

However, the Graphics amplifier is not a good investment, for a start its only PCIe 4x not 16x like the Razer version and its proprietary to Alienware so cannot be used with anything else and may not be used on future AW laptops

Right now id wait for the new models, and look into a thunderbolt enclosore

Thunderbolt has seemed to be the best option. Thunderbolt 3 I think will make the standard look even better for external GPUs. The only thing is don't those external GPU solutions not allow you to use the same screen that the laptop is on, don't you have to plug it into another monitor? Not like it's a huge deal but it'd only be practical for home use.

[ShadowCaptain]

18 minutes ago, wcreek said:

Thunderbolt has seemed to be the best option. Thunderbolt 3 I think will make the standard look even better for external GPUs. The only thing is don't those external GPU solutions not allow you to use the same screen that the laptop is on, don't you have to plug it into another monitor? Not like it's a huge deal but it'd only be practical for home use.

its only practical for home use anyway,

 

I think MOST people want a decent GPU for use when out and about, and when they come home, they dock it with their 1440p/4k monitor, proper speakers, hard drives, usb ports etc proper keyboard and mouse and its a desktop

[thekeemo]

4 hours ago, Paralectic said:

Not really brand focused, but if you want a decent product Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, EVGA, and any common brand will have their offerings if you are looking into a laptop with an external Thunderbolt dock for a GPU.

Also, laptops with the mobile Pascal chips will come soon, Asus, MSI, Razer ( not a fan but w/e ), and build to order laptop companies will offer them for a relatively normal price.

I would get one with an i7, 16/32GB DDR4 and a 1080m ( or a desktop 1080, if they do the same as with the 980 )

Just be warned with Asus and Gigabyte warranty is not great.

[D2ultima]

3 hours ago, ShadowCaptain said:

There is nothing inherently wrong with the Alienware laptops that most would have you believe, and even their price isnt that bad compared to similar machines

 

However, the Graphics amplifier is not a good investment, for a start its only PCIe 4x not 16x like the Razer version and its proprietary to Alienware so cannot be used with anything else and may not be used on future AW laptops

Right now id wait for the new models, and look into a thunderbolt enclosore

The Razer solution is via Thunderbolt 3. It is PCI/e 3.0 x4; theoretical max speeds would be PCI/e 3.0 "x5" which is the limit of the TB3 connection. The Razer solution also does not require system reboots, which means it is using "Optimus/Enduro" tech, and thus inferior to restarting-required tech like the Graphics Amp and MSI's GS30 Shadow dock.

 

NO all-laptop solution that's being designed which has already been announced (ASUS, Razer, other independent companies doing research with plans to launch) have created a non-hotswappable solution, which means they're all using Optimus/Enduro and thus inferior to solutions that require restarts (as far as control and ease-of-use for all games go). I am fully aware that many will say Optimus/Enduro is just fine, however the day you DO run into any issue (like when Dragon Age Inquisition refused to play in fullscreen on Optimus machines, for example) you're going to regret it.

3 hours ago, wcreek said:

 

@D2ultima seems to be this forum's resident Clevo/Sager fanboy. Which Clevo/Sager are decent options but are a bit harder to shop for because you usually have to go to a specific site to get them. Amazon does carry some Sager laptops but not sure about Clevo. Sager basically just takes Clevo's designs and maybe alters it a little bit and then stamps their logo on it.

 

For the record, I am not a "Clevo/Sager fanboy". For one, if any user has the money for it, I will *NEVER* suggest buying from Sager, as other slightly more expensive rebranders of Clevo machines offer better QA and unlocked sBIOS/vBIOSes etc, like Mythlogic or Eurocom. Clevo is an ODM, unless you are a large business in the Asian regions like China/Korea/etc you are not going to be buying pure "clevo" machines. They are *NOT* OEMs like Dell/HP/OriginPC/etc... you must get them rebranded, and Sager is simply the most well-known US rebrander of Clevo, and acts as a middleman distributing Clevo barebones units to other smaller US-based rebranders like Pro-Star Computing and AVADirect. OEMs buy from ODMs (even Dell/Alienware and HP and Lenovo, etc) and rebrand them all the time. You simply don't often hear about ODMs... Clevo is more an exception to the rule, and it's easiest to remember their specific model names to find them from varying shops across the world since they're so widely rebranded. Last I remember, Dell/Alienware buy their machines from Compal. If Compal sold the same designs to many other OEMs across the world, we'd probably start talking in Compal model names instead of Alienware model names.

 

For two, my judgements change depending on what each OEM does each refresh of laptops. For example, I will never tell a user to get a GT80 titan from MSI over a P870DM from a Clevo rebrander. Why? The GT80, even though offering 120W GTX 980 cards in SLI (which are better than 980Ms found elsewhere), can only take a single 330W power brick, and even at stock, drains the battery if gaming under heavy-ish load with the 980 SLI situation, and after a few hours when it hits 0 charge, performance throttles down basically to 980M levels... whereas you could use a dual-brick solution on a P870DM to OC 980M SLI or their 200W single 980 to its limits, and tear the GT80 to shreds, without ever hurting the battery, as well as having a 6700K CPU instead of 6820HK/6920HQ in the MSI. And the cost nearly the same. I have factual reasons as to why certain manufacturers cut corners, or have designed gimmicky machines that have little usefulness in practice for most users... or sometimes, like with the N155RF models from certain manufacturers, there is a value attached that you cannot find elsewhere.

 

When laptops get refreshed and models change, I and a few others over at NBR go through them with fine-toothed combs and follow up with people who buy them and consolidate a lot of information and then we make judgements and learn what to tell people. Clevo has the best hardware and shitty software. Shitty software (like their BIOSes) can be fixed easier than shitty hardware designs because we have people like Prema in the community who are able to fix such things should a user require fixing (or simply be an enthusiast who wants options). The MINUTE MSI pulls themselves together (because they make arguably the second best hardware designs, and have great software design in general) and stops overpricing their models (which they began when the GT72 launched... I still have a video where I could get a SLI 980M machine with the same specs as the MSI GT72 single GPU... while saving about $300 USD), you might very well see me recommend MSI a lot more, especially in the midranged machine sections.

[TheGamingBarrel]

4 hours ago, ShadowCaptain said:

There is nothing inherently wrong with the Alienware laptops that most would have you believe, and even their price isnt that bad compared to similar machines

 

However, the Graphics amplifier is not a good investment, for a start its only PCIe 4x not 16x like the Razer version and its proprietary to Alienware so cannot be used with anything else and may not be used on future AW laptops

Right now id wait for the new models, and look into a thunderbolt enclosore

If you look at the older M15X, they were insane machines that you could stick a 980M Or R9290XM ( Desktop HD 7870 ) And upgrade it to a 940XM And beat almost everyone for less than any new laptop.

[ShadowCaptain]

4 minutes ago, TheGamingBarrel said:

If you look at the older M15X, they were insane machines that you could stick a 980M Or R9290XM ( Desktop HD 7870 ) And upgrade it to a 940XM And beat almost everyone for less than any new laptop.

yeah and the latest 13" model has 12 hours of battery etc

 

like they still make good laptops, but so many people are just like "eww alienware" i mean sure they arent cheap, nobody would argue that, but some models are good value

[handymanshandle]

13 minutes ago, D2ultima said:

snip

Yeah I didn't mean to put it as Fanboy, I just wasn't sure how to put it... It seemed that you really liked Clevo/Clevo Rebrands.

Also I know Clevo is an ODM. Though I thought I found an actual Clevo barebones on Amazon once.

 

[D2ultima]

4 minutes ago, wcreek said:

Yeah I didn't mean to put it as Fanboy, I just wasn't sure how to put it... It seemed that you really liked Clevo/Clevo Rebrands.

Also I know Clevo is an ODM. Though I thought I found an actual Clevo barebones on Amazon once.

 

It's not hard to find them... RJTech sells them, for one.

 

That being said, if you want to buy a laptop from Amazon or something, you can simply ask LPC-Digital or one of those reseller sites that sell Sager machines to add your order to Amazon. It costs more since Amazon has a stocking fee, though.

 

And yes, I "like" them compared to other machines I've seen and used, but I'll only recommend the best, and that includes price in the equation. If you find a GT72 for $1500 USD with decent specs for example, I'll never under any circumstances suggest a P670RE or P670RG. But if you're looking at a $3000 model, you might as well grab a higher end machine like a P770DM-G.

[TheGamingBarrel]

12 minutes ago, ShadowCaptain said:

yeah and the latest 13" model has 12 hours of battery etc

 

like they still make good laptops, but so many people are just like "eww alienware" i mean sure they arent cheap, nobody would argue that, but some models are good value

How much was your M18X? Seems pretty damn powerful.

[NickiChaos]

On 5/23/2016 at 11:02 AM, ShadowCaptain said:

There is nothing inherently wrong with the Alienware laptops that most would have you believe, and even their price isnt that bad compared to similar machines

 

However, the Graphics amplifier is not a good investment, for a start its only PCIe 4x not 16x like the Razer version and its proprietary to Alienware so cannot be used with anything else and may not be used on future AW laptops

Right now id wait for the new models, and look into a thunderbolt enclosore

The connection for the Graphics amp is a PCI-E 4x Gen 3 slot, which is equivalent to an 8x Gen 2 slot and 16x Gen 1 slot. There isn't a graphics card currently on the market that comes close to using that much bandwidth so a 4x Gen 3 slot is more than enough.

 

While a Thunderbolt 3 connection would be more universal, it's up to the vendor of the laptop to support the Razer Core. That means that even if a non Razer laptop has a USB Type-C connector, it may not work with the Razer core.

 

Lastly, there comes bandwidth issues with a single USB Type-C connection when you integrate the external graphics enclosure with a 4 port usb 3 hub as the graphics card and USB devices share the connection whereas with the graphics amp, the connection separates the PCIE connection from the USB connection eliminating the bottlenecking caused by a single shared connection. Sure, Thunderbolt 3/USB Type-C has a ton of bandwidth to work with but, depending on the devices you hook in to the USB slots, that bandwidth can get eaten rather quickly.

 

Even though people don't like proprietary anything, I think Alienware's implimentation of an external graphics card enclosure is the better one because it separates the connections. It would have been nice if Dell had opened up the external PCI-E connection and licensed the tech so that we could see more of these kinds of devices. But Dell being Dell has to unnecessarily hold everything as tight to its chest as a child with a toy that doesn't belong to them.

[ShadowCaptain]

10 minutes ago, NickiChaos said:

SNIP

Thanks for the clarification
I wonder if AW will continue down their route

[NickiChaos]

2 hours ago, ShadowCaptain said:

Thanks for the clarification
I wonder if AW will continue down their route

In all likelyhood they will for the time being until they decide to discontinue the GA or come up with something different. It is Dell after all.

[LuisMSFT]

On ‎5‎/‎23‎/‎2016 at 1:58 PM, wcreek said:

Thunderbolt has seemed to be the best option. Thunderbolt 3 I think will make the standard look even better for external GPUs. The only thing is don't those external GPU solutions not allow you to use the same screen that the laptop is on, don't you have to plug it into another monitor? Not like it's a huge deal but it'd only be practical for home use.

However just to mention the Razer Core Thunderbolt 3 enclosure also use the bandwidth for the USB and LAN port that it's intended for the GPU data transfer creating a bottleneck if you are projecting the data back to the laptop to use the laptop screen with a lot of USB devices connected to it, on the AGA it is a separated bandwidth connection that manage the data I/O to the ports and it does not use the bandwidth intended for GPU, there are 2 lanes the 4xPCI data and the port data lane in the Alienware solution.