Alienware Graphics Amplifier with 40 Series GPU's

[Maxware79]

Someone posted this on Reddit this week so it may be helpful for some of you.

 

 

 

[ssj92]

Just to copy/paste in the event that post ever gets deleted or something:

 

Further reading of experiences around the AGA in this and other forums, made me even try the plug and unplug technique proven to work by some users with the 3000 series (https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware/PCI-e-3-0-x4-for-ampere-3080-3090-question/m-p/7894720#M43691), however I had no luck until I did the following:

• Uninstalled AWCC using Revo uninstaller (advanced scan and deleting found entries is mandatory after uninstalling)

• Restarted system

• Uninstalled Nvidia drivers

• Restarted system

• Installed the Chipset INF utility

• Restarted the system

• Located the following subkey in regedit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PnP\Pci

• Generated the HackFlags entry with a value data of 200 as depicted here (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client/deployment/error-attach-pci-express-expansion-chassis)

• Reinstalled Nvidia drivers using the latest package

• Restarted system

• The card was still being detected as “Microsoft Basic Display Adapter”, so I uninstalled the Nvidia drivers

• Restarted the system

• Generated the HackFlags entry with a value data of 400 as previously described (this value worked for me)

• Reinstalled Nvidia drivers

• Restarted the system

• After restarting, the card was outputting video and recognized as NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti

• Reinstalled the latest AWCC

• Restarted the system

• After restarting, the card and AGA were also being recognized in the AWCC

 

Important notes:

1. The HackFlags entry never worked for me until I uninstalled the NVIDIA drivers each time I modified the subkey; for this reason I suggest testing systematically the 200, 400 and 600 values always uninstalling and reinstalling.

2. Apparently AWCC can interfere with process since I tried everything depicted below and it did not work until AWCC was uninstalled.

3. The AGA and card were connected to my laptop the whole time

[aldarxt]

On 1/12/2023 at 4:29 PM, ssj92 said:

Just to copy/paste in the event that post ever gets deleted or something:

 

Further reading of experiences around the AGA in this and other forums, made me even try the plug and unplug technique proven to work by some users with the 3000 series (https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware/PCI-e-3-0-x4-for-ampere-3080-3090-question/m-p/7894720#M43691), however I had no luck until I did the following:

• Uninstalled AWCC using Revo uninstaller (advanced scan and deleting found entries is mandatory after uninstalling)

• Restarted system

• Uninstalled Nvidia drivers

• Restarted system

• Installed the Chipset INF utility

• Restarted the system

• Located the following subkey in regedit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PnP\Pci

• Generated the HackFlags entry with a value data of 200 as depicted here (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client/deployment/error-attach-pci-express-expansion-chassis)

• Reinstalled Nvidia drivers using the latest package

• Restarted system

• The card was still being detected as “Microsoft Basic Display Adapter”, so I uninstalled the Nvidia drivers

• Restarted the system

• Generated the HackFlags entry with a value data of 400 as previously described (this value worked for me)

• Reinstalled Nvidia drivers

• Restarted the system

• After restarting, the card was outputting video and recognized as NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti

• Reinstalled the latest AWCC

• Restarted the system

• After restarting, the card and AGA were also being recognized in the AWCC

 

Important notes:

1. The HackFlags entry never worked for me until I uninstalled the NVIDIA drivers each time I modified the subkey; for this reason I suggest testing systematically the 200, 400 and 600 values always uninstalling and reinstalling.

2. Apparently AWCC can interfere with process since I tried everything depicted below and it did not work until AWCC was uninstalled.

3. The AGA and card were connected to my laptop the whole time

Could the AWCC interfere with other mxm cards like the Aetina_MXM_M3N1080 or the A4500 that you had a problem with. I have been having a problem with the Aetina_MXM_M3N1080 not working in the m18x r2 and m17x r4. I am going to try again but remove AWCC and see what happens.

[ssj92]

3 hours ago, aldarxt said:

Could the AWCC interfere with other mxm cards like the Aetina_MXM_M3N1080 or the A4500 that you had a problem with. I have been having a problem with the Aetina_MXM_M3N1080 not working in the m18x r2 and m17x r4. I am going to try again but remove AWCC and see what happens.

No. I ran aetina 1080 perfectly fine in aw18 and awcc is installed. also works in m18xr2. 

[aldarxt]

3 hours ago, ssj92 said:

No. I ran aetina 1080 perfectly fine in aw18 and awcc is installed. also works in m18xr2. 

Thanks anyway but I just tried again in the m17x r4 and the GTX 1080 just won't work. I get code 43 and searched around again and nothing works. Tried uninstalling AWCC and OSD also Intel HD Graphics 4000 just to see what happens. The BIOS sees the 1080, so does GPU-Z but very limited info. The drivers install fine even tried standard drivers but they would not even allow it. This is why it gets scairy buying cards. I just had another goof-up buying a GTX-1070 for the P870DMG-3 and the guy sent me a GTX-1080. Now I have 2 different cards for it and can't run in SLI. I am thinking of asking if I could return the 1080 in exchange for a 1070. But maybe I should just flash the BIOS and get a 2080 or 3080 IDK!

[Csupati]

On 1/30/2023 at 11:45 PM, aldarxt said:

Thanks anyway but I just tried again in the m17x r4 and the GTX 1080 just won't work. I get code 43 and searched around again and nothing works. Tried uninstalling AWCC and OSD also Intel HD Graphics 4000 just to see what happens. The BIOS sees the 1080, so does GPU-Z but very limited info. The drivers install fine even tried standard drivers but they would not even allow it. This is why it gets scairy buying cards. I just had another goof-up buying a GTX-1070 for the P870DMG-3 and the guy sent me a GTX-1080. Now I have 2 different cards for it and can't run in SLI. I am thinking of asking if I could return the 1080 in exchange for a 1070. But maybe I should just flash the BIOS and get a 2080 or 3080 IDK!

Bro, did you modify your inf file?

 

[1610ftw]

Got my hands on one of these and looks like the performance is pretty impressive!

 

I got to test it with a 4080 and the Time Spy score is in the ballpark of what sites like notebookcheck have as stock which is about 26500.

With some tweaking it should be possible to increase this to maybe 27500 but benching is not that much fun when the Amplifier reduces performance by at least 10% 😄

 

So overall this means that for the relatively modest price of a 4070 Super one can get roughly 4080 mobile performance and with a 4070 Ti Super a performance that is roughly on par with a 4090 mobile - not too bad!

 

 

[2CPU]

BTW the 5080 works just fine. I actually screwed up my Win10 by trying to use the "HackFlags" and had to reinstall windows since I did not realize the boot hang was exactly due to that flag.

 

I wish I had bought the eight pin Y-cable first since it is required to get the 5080 to turn on with the default Alienware Gfx Amplifier power supply.

 

 

Once the Y cable is installed such that all three of the power adapter is filled the card just comes up as “Microsoft Basic Display Adapter”. Just installed the latest Nvidia driver which updated both 2080/5080. However when I installed AWCC the program does not give me a logo with the amplifier. 

 

The 3dmark scores jump up like crazy when comparing 2080 vs the 5080. I just recently bought Guardians of the Galaxy and Indiana Jones which both run Ultra settings so the 2080 would of totally fallen on its face. Timespy results are neatly 20k

[2CPU]

I ended up removing the Alienware command center and downloading the 1.1G (full version) for a re-install. After a few reboots the amplifier can be seen for the FX adjustment.

 

[ssj92]

On 8/13/2025 at 3:16 PM, 2CPU said:

BTW the 5080 works just fine. I actually screwed up my Win10 by trying to use the "HackFlags" and had to reinstall windows since I did not realize the boot hang was exactly due to that flag.

 

I wish I had bought the eight pin Y-cable first since it is required to get the 5080 to turn on with the default Alienware Gfx Amplifier power supply.

 

 

Once the Y cable is installed such that all three of the power adapter is filled the card just comes up as “Microsoft Basic Display Adapter”. Just installed the latest Nvidia driver which updated both 2080/5080. However when I installed AWCC the program does not give me a logo with the amplifier. 

 

The 3dmark scores jump up like crazy when comparing 2080 vs the 5080. I just recently bought Guardians of the Galaxy and Indiana Jones which both run Ultra settings so the 2080 would of totally fallen on its face. Timespy results are neatly 20k

So 5080 was plug n play?

[2CPU]

It was plug and play for about three days (Add Y splitter for power and display port cable from 5080 to Monitor). Not sure why but today the system is really unstable. Only thing I changed was adding some new RAM so I need to take that out and see if any improvement.

 

Just really strange since last night I was getting sudden drops in the IJ full circle to 5 fps then back to 50+ which did not happen Saturday (the day I added more RAM). Now the game refuses to launch properly and runs at 5 fps the entire time and me messing with the settings with a choppy mouse hasn't helped.

 

I read that the best way to unlock the full potential of the AGA is to manually disable the internal/laptop gfx discrete (somehow in BIOS such that they do not show in OS) such that the system only looks to the AGA card. I haven't discovered those steps but perhaps I am getting unlucky BIOS enumeration which is giving the 5080 trouble w the OS? Sometimes if I have the other cards disabled in the device manager then strange things happen. One being the internal LCD does not cleanly hand-off during boot and stuck with logo when the 5080 monitor takes over. (not always though)