Alienware Alpha + Graphics Amplifier problem

Spoonablehippo · October 23, 2017

So, I’m having major issues getting the Graphics Amplifier to work with my Alpha R2.

I’ve had the amp a while as it was going cheap, but have just purchased an EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC GAMING GPU.

The problem I have is that the cards performance starts off fine, then starts to drop, MASSIVELY, until its unusable and the system audio is all distorted and slowed down too!?

For example, using the 3D Mark Fire Strike Ultra “Stress Test”, the card starts off hovering between 35 – 50fps for the first couple of rounds, then it slowly starts decreasing every cycle until eventually it’s at 10fps or under!

The same happens in games and with the Steam VR test.

Temp wise the card only gets up to about 65c, so I thought thermal throttling would not be the issue. However, using afterburner to set the fans to 100%, then the card works perfectly and passes the 3D Mark “Stress Test” with a score of 98%!!!!

So, what’s going on???

It’s not getting anywhere near NVIDIA’s 84c thermal throttle limit.

So far, I have tried:

Fresh install of graphics driver using DDU

Fresh install of GA software 3.12

A fresh install of Windows 10

Purchased A NEW GRAPHICS AMPLIFIER from Amazon

All with the same problem ☹

It’s not the GPU either as it works and behaves normally in my desktop. And I remember having a similar issue with an ASUS TURO GTX 1070 I tried last year, but it wasn’t so extreme.

Another issue is that the GA doesn’t show in command centre, so I can’t change the colour on the front LED. Found another thread on the Alpha forum with a guy that had the same issue and Alienware tech support told him the GA or cable was faulty, but I’ve bought a replacement and still not working!

Any help of suggestions would be very much appreciated, thanks lol