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 nearly 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.

 

UPDATE 2: The discussed work around seems to be fine for basic tasks, benchmarks and casual games but will eventually freeze when extreme gaming loads placed. Only waiting for a "good boot" works at extreme gaming load =/ (like 1 in 10 boots it seems)

 

Update: Turns out the AGA/Win10/5080 can come up in less than perfect PCIe/BIOS handshake. I must of been fortunate with my initial boots but appears the issue is confusion that Win10 has dealing with the PCIe errors and then handing off the Gfx workloads back-n-forth with the onboard discrete and the AGA. This terrible passing of programs around trying to optimize just craters the performance/stability. Using @ssj92 post about dealing with different cards in his M18x system was a good workaround. I noticed an improvement when I had assigned a program to use the 5080 explicitly and had wondered if there was a global setting like no 2080 for GPU workloads.

 

 

Even on "bad boots" the 3d mark is 2 or 3 fps less than perfect rather than completely freezing (later testing has exposed this to not be 100% workaround). All the display related programs only run on the 5080 with the "DirectXUserGlobalSettings" (only laptop display shown attached on 2080) I cannot disable the 2080 or the internal LCD remains on after the 5080 takes over on Windows boot and I don't want to burn the image into the screen. I've currently disabled the iGPU in device manager to try and further limit the "Gfx program shuffling",

 

2080 just sits idle and turns the LCD off while I use external monitor via Display Port from the 5080.

 

FYI I recommend HWInfo64 default boot on startup with the 5080 sensors displayed. Thus I know immediately if I have best gaming fps ready to go or need to try again. However the workaround is perfect for 99% of everything else. Likely most will need the HackFlags at 400 and then above HighPerfAdapter adjustment. Not sure if it matters but I also removed the Gen1 idle transition by changing NVIDIA control panel to high performance.

 

 

 

Old debug progress and rant posts:

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)

 

 

[2CPU]

Removing added 32GB sticks of RAM did not help with the misbehavior. It seems that the AGA/5080 comes up in good state sometimes and marginal state other times (more often lately in marginal). If attempting to run 3dmark and it will freeze on the marginal occasions. Could just be bad PCIe link training or something with enumeration on boot.

 

Anyways, not my best runs but at least now in a working state. Steel Nomad at 80+ fps seems decent.

 

 

Paying a 15-20% penalty with Gen3x4 so it will never be a benchmark box.

 

[2CPU]

I swapped the CPU to a 9900K and the stability has improved and maybe better BIOS since I changed that too. Overall the OS does not lock up like it would with the 9900 and the AGA w 5080. I've downgraded the Gfx driver since I lost outline highlight in the Indiana Jones game and need that function.

 

 

 

[2CPU]

AGA keepin' is real though with ~5x improvement.
 

2080:

 

5080:

[2CPU]

Going to order another AGA from eBay to see if somehow I have a bad cable or unit. I can observe PCIe errors on the AGA. When I get a "good boot" everything is great but annoying I have to play around with the boots to do so. 

 

Update: Both AGA show the same behavior and if anyone wants to buy a nice unit I have a spare now.

 

 

Edit: I checked into these further with HWInfo. Reply/Recovery of the PCIe link but this is a "good boot"

 

Here is what a "bad boot" looks like: without the workaround posted above your laptop will eventually freeze/reboot

 

 

[2CPU]

Yeah the "HackFlags" of PCI can be some dark times. I messed around (again) and found out.....laptop dead for two days as I wanted to try 200 or 600 setting.

 

Ended up having to recover my registry in Win USB boot recovery via command line. After launching regedit you click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and then you can "Load Hive" from the File menu. At that point you are actually editing the HDD/SSD registry if pointing at C:\Windows\System32\config System registry. Made a recovery edit away from 200 & 600 which ruined my PCIe SSD enumeration for boot (just sits forever with spinning circle). Currently having to use 400 of the HackFlags for reasons unknown to me and just "Unload Hive" after correction. As posted before I did not require any HackFlags registry entry. Perhaps the BIOS flash back to 1.3.2 is the new variable....

 

On BIOS 1.28.0 (of Area-51 R1) I could select Windows recovery from the ... of the Dell OS Recovery F12 boot (upper right) and get it to allow me to enter Windows Safeboot but not the case on 1.3.2 BIOS. (easy path to Windows Safeboot made it way easier to mess around with registry edits) Hence this venting post where maybe, just maybe it helps someone else in a weird spot like I was. 

 

I've also cooked my EFI boot partition like 5 times from the 5080 marginal training. Self-inflected since I was forced to power off deadlocked OS at improper times. Requiring me to again boot into command line Win USB recovery and then use diskpart to delete the corrupted EFI (which is often 100MB btw) partition and recreate it. Then use bcdedit to assign that newly created EFI system partition to the proper Windows directory. Yay......easy fix but not fun when you cannot figure out why sudden BSOD at boot. (or just use Hiren's Win11 boot DVD utilities, smart to do)

 

Never needed any data recovery as just missing EFI/corrupted boot partition or a self inflicted PCIe config issues. Posted from the 1.3.2 BIOS Alienware Area-51M R1 w AGA running 5080 which is working awesome at the moment. I learn from "breaking" things and glad to be just learning and not totally SOL.

 

Edit: Also Hiren's boot DVD is a lifesaver when you are going too fast and blast away your BCD or drive partitions. The utilities on there are great resources. 

[2CPU]

VBIOS update went well and I recommend making sure the 5080 is in a stable boot before doing any update.

 

 

I think I did not need at first to use HackFlags since I had a few devices disabled in the BIOS. Flashing the BIOS and only disabling the EFI capsule update did then need 400. So if your install of 5080 shows Code 12 then might need 400 setting. But do not proactively add this until the Code shows up in Device Manager for the 5080 or your system might not boot.