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I haven't seen this little add-on on sale ever (from what I know…). So it is a good chance for Alienware 13/15 laptop owners to pick up one.
Dell Alienware Graphics Amplifier - $199 @ Dell eBay
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halfaznpersuasion on 26/01/2016 - 14:15 ebay.com.au (3005 clicks)
Last edited 26/01/2016 - 20:50 by 1 other user
Last edited 26/01/2016 - 20:50 by 1 other user
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Unfortunately only the newer 2015+ alienware laptops T.T
Supposedly there are companies making universal ones though (corsair etc) you will just need a Thunderbolt port
Pretty cool idea! Though i'm pretty sure this is just an enclosure, so you still need to purchase a graphics card separately to plug in (i'm sure there would have been a few that learnt this the hard way)
correct :3 and it also has to fit….which is a problem in some cases…
Reviewers tested a Titan X. So I'm sure you'll be able to stick in pretty much every GPU in the market.
The power supply is 450 watts, which is plenty of juice.
Warning: although informative, video is somewhat cringeworthy.
HARDCORE!!!
Quite a cool device, but proprietary cable and only 1X PCIe 3.0 signalling are kind of bummers (though you can still get pretty good bandwidth with the 1x)
The cable itself carries data at x4 PCIe Gen 3 data rates. It's not x16 like a standard vga card but they tested it and found no noticeable difference.
Oh… true it does (had seen some crappy screenshot previously and had only seen X1) 16x power at least and yeah, 4x Gen 3 is plenty…
Wish someone would hack the cable and create a breakout for it!
They'd sell a million if it was a thunderbolt connector not some proprietary bs.
It's standard pcie signals over a proprietary cable. Quite sad that they would do that…
Yep, sales would go through the roof with the right approach.
Good for Alienware owners though.
eGPU kits have existed for some years now, google DIY eGPU and make your own at half the price.
were they doing that with their new model and the razer blade stealth?
The necessity to reboot kinda kills a lot of the advantage. Can't just plug in and go.
Reboot on any modern computer should be <20 seconds though
Yeah, just find any SSD deal of your liking here at Ozbargain.
Still lose the state of all your open programs (or at least most of them). So even a quick reboot still doesn't bring it back to where it was before.
Enable hibernation then hibernate the pc and turn it on again
@Agret: that's not a reboot. The reason you need to restart your computer is to reset the graphics subsystem.
@drunifex: I thought it was so the BIOS could re-initialize which device was driving the laptop screen. Hibernate suspends the OS state to the hard drive (as opposed to sleep which keeps the entire memory intact and just runs the system in an extremely low power mode to keep the RAM alive) and does a full power off then when you power back on the BIOS should handover the device that drives the screen then when Windows resumes the state it will detect one graphics card was removed from the system and another added and reinitialize its own graphics.
@Agret: You are correct with the differences with sleep/hibernate. Unfortunately Windows is not good at hot swap (or in this case warm swap). So it needs the base system to reset to repoll the hardware.
@drunifex: I thought that nvidia and amd switchable graphics worked on a similar principle?
I'm just speculating anyway as I don't have this device and the graphics extender to put the theory to the test.
@Agret: Yeah my understanding about that one is the driver is built to integrate the two adapters. This one can't work that way because ofthe open ended video card selection.
Don't own a alienware laptop sadly, but good deal anyway.
This is actually decent, thanks OP..
Great price. +1
Yeah great price. Unfortunately, not willing to buy a graphics card on top of this. My 13 performs reasonably well without it.
What games are you playing on it and at what settings mate?
Mostly rocket league at max (which isn't all that demanding). Most demanding game I played was probably witcher 3 on high settings. Easily run any game on medium without any problems I'd say.
I am sure I read somewhere it only worked with units 2014 onwards(?) Was looking into it ages ago as I have the MX17 R4 which is early 2012 vintage and it would not work with it :s
Yeah it requires the correct port for it to work which is models from 2014.
Should be $99 considering the 2016 version is better\faster as per CES2016
I haven't seen a 2016 version of the amplifier o.o link please.
Is it actually faster? It's still PCIe 3.0 x4 from what I can gather. The Thunderbolt 3.0 interface makes it more useful though, assuming, hopefully, Thunderbolt finally catches on.
@TheContact:
I read up a bit on it. Supposedly it was buggy and nowhere near finished but the idea was its not proprietary like the alienware one and anyone could technically use it.
DiY Vidock was all the rage a while back. Was the same sort of process except not locked to a specific laptop manufacturer. It did require a laptop with either an expresscard slot or miniPCIe. I've still got my cables, but laptops with extra bits hanging out the sides was not very useful too me. Desktop for home, laptop for away; and I'm not lugging external GPUs with my laptop.
http://www.hwtools.net/Adapter/PE4L%20V2.1.html
There were some limitations with this DiY method (like bandwidth), I wonder if the Dell version has any such limitations?
Wow, very tempted to pair one of these with my cheap Alienware 17 R2 (was a refurb, cheaper than equivalent Clevo, etc).
Still not convinced, but nice find…
Your laptop already has the powerful NVIDIA 970m, correct? You know if you hook this up your 970m will be disabled?
It will have a benefit that your laptop won't be producing as much heat, so perhaps your CPU won't be thermal throttled as often, if it ever was.
Yeah, I wasn't considering it, but my laptop is almost exclusively for gaming, I don't have space for a full pc setup.
The 970m is good, it would be nice to have more…Before the end of 2016 GPU should be getting juicy, so maybe wait till then to take advantage of their glory?
This is a great deal for those with a Dell 13/15 already, for those thinking about buying a Dell to go with this, don't. Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports will allow for any laptop with the port.
Do you have something confirming this? The product info only appears to list compatibility with the Alienware units (with the proprietary bus connector)
I should have written Dell Alienware 13/15.
Tempting. But I never game on my Alienware 13 as I have a more powerful desktop setup.
Out of stock now
I wonder how many people have bought this thinking it will amplify their graphics without realizing they needed to add their own GPU.
Lol. Also kind of defeats the purpose of a laptop if you have to carry around GPU separately with a box the size of a smaller PC.
The concept of adding a desktop GPU to a light laptop is great if the laptop is slim and light, you would't take the box with you everywhere, leave it at home / work.
It makes less sense adding a computer GPU to a gaming machine, it already has a decent GPU (so you're paying twice).I can see real use for this, laptop you can take to work then when you get home set it yup on your desk and connect to this for some decent gaming. A lot of people only have notebooks and can't justify having another desktop pc
^ This.
Great for students and FiFo
Damn, missed out.
This is my story dealing with Dell for the last 2 months.
I purchased a Dell Inspiron 15 7000 from this deal https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/222514
After install the internet stopped working 15 seconds into using my laptop. I thought let me try restarting the laptop again it stopped working about 10 seconds in. I thought no worries let me get the drivers for the intel wifi card. I jumped onto the old computer downloaded the drivers put them on a USB drive only to find the USB ports were not working on the new machine too.
I quickly called Dell support and the guy asked me to factory restore the computer to first install setting and try again. If I still had a problem I should drop him an email and he would call me back. After reinstall the same thing happened.
I got a call back from the tech and he blamed one of my programs. I explained to him that the internet and USB stop working 10 seconds after install and there is no way I can get anything on there that quick which gave me an idea.
I connected the USB and restarted the computer only to fail as the laptop tried to boot from USB.
I removed the USB then reconnected it once windows started to boot and got the the login screen.
As soon as the computer booted I clicked on the USB and copied the file before the port stopped working (Worked on second try)
Then I tried installing the new driver only to find it would give an error during install. At this point the technician suggested a replacement unit to be sent as we were going nowhere.
A few days later.
In the middle of the night I got an Idea. The reason the install was failing was because the WiFi card would disappear from device manager. So when the windows tried to apply the drivers there would be nothing present to receive the new drivers.
I turned on the computer and opened the device manager and uninstalled the Wifi device before it could disappear. It failed a couple of times before I finally managed to get it to uninstall. Now using the new driver that I had copied on my desktop (from the day I got the computer) I reinstalled the WiFi card. The USB, WiFi, Blue screen of death when shutting down and Driver_crash_error were all gone.
Now the "new computer" arrived
It had a problem of its own. The track pad was wobbly and I called dell straight away. They sent the tech in who said I should learn to live with it as replacing it might make it worse. I was like are you kidding me? Seeing I looked unhappy he went ahead with the repair. The tech had ordered a new palm rest and track pad. Replacing those parts actually made it worse. Not only that I started getting the dreaded ghost touch in the bottom left corner.
I asked dell to keep my old unit. They said it had already been booked for return and they couldn't cancel it but they could send me a third unit.
So they requested a third unit yesterday and today I got an email saying the replacement had been rejected and they offered me a refund instead.
All this happened over 2 months and has left a bad taste in my mouth. The problem is I loved the touch screen and I had the computer finally going.
I guess someone has to ask the question, "Will this work on other non-Alienware laptop"?