Alienware13, Graphics Amplifier, External video card always idle.

Cryo I had bad luck with an ASUS 290 DirectCU II (too tall for the enclosure and not even recognized during boot) along with an XFX DoubleD 280X (horrible performance although the work around that people mentioned about disabling the 860M manually wasn't out yet). I wouldn't even recommend AMD at this point vs. Nvidia with my poor experience. You're absolutely right, they released this product without it being anywhere near ready for consumer consumption and I find it hard recommending to anyone who isn't patient.

I was in the same boat as you with returning it however when I contacted support, they offered me a $45 credit which made holding out a little more enticing. Considering now that I have an "almost" working setup albeit a little tedious at points, I am "happier" about the situation but IT absolutely needs to step up and find a solution.

@wyvernzhao

Have your GA connected to the laptop. Download Display Driver Uninstaller along with the most recent Nvidia drivers. Boot into Safe Mode and use Display Driver Uninstaller to completely uninstall the Nvidia drivers. Reboot the computer back into Windows and then use the new Nvidia drivers installer to reinstall them. Reboot the computer again and your GA/desktop card should then be working.

If the installer says it doesn't detect any Nvidia products, go into Device Manager and you'll probably see an entry under display adapters called "Basic Display Adapter" or something like that. You will need to manually load the drivers into that device (right click, update drivers, choose the manual option, click browse for your own drivers, and find your way to C:\Nvidia\driverfolder.... to load the INF). Once you do that it will probably list GTX 970 but still not function, rerun the Nvidia installer and it will most likely detect your card and properly install (if it still can't detect it when you run the installer, reboot again). Once the Nvidia driver software runs and installs the drivers you just need to reboot one last time and you should be up and going.

Now if you want to use the 860M again without the GA unit; you're going to need to do what I said earlier in the thread... shut down, disconnect the GA unit, uninstall the drivers, reinstall the drivers.

Hi cj0r & jim_survak,

Actually I have already posted my solution to solve this problem (The 2nd reply of this post). The steps are similar to what cj0r did. But I don't need bother to enter the safe mode to clean the nvidia driver. Here are my detailed steps again:

1. connect GA to AW13 and boot the laptop.  and my gtx970 in GA is connected to an individual LED monitor.

2. after first boot, the GA will not work, and there is no signal output to LED monitor. Actually at this point if you open the device manager, you can see the external video card, in my case gtx970, is already been recognized and listed in the video adapter. So then I open the control pannel and search for nvidia driver and uninstall it. There probably will be several things related to nvidia keyword. The most important thing is to unintall the XXX.YY(version number) graphics driver. After the uninstallation, the program will ask for a reboot. Then do it.

3. note that the GA is always connected during these steps. After the second boot, install a nvidia graphics driver. Now the latest verson is 347.09 for desktop video card. after the installation, reboot the laptop again.

4. after the third boot, my GA is finally working, and the external LED monitor is showing the video.

5. if you donot disconnect the GA, shut down AW13 will not destroy the state. But once you disconnected the GA and boot your AW13 without it. OS willl automatically install the driver for gtx860m, and next time you will have to repeat the above steps to re-enable the GA.

I think this is my situation now. there are some differences between my solution steps vs. cj0r's. I don't know why you have to un/re-install the driver under safe mode. and even worse, you have to do this to regain your gtx860m. I think it's too inconvenient.

Apparently, dell is not ready to release this product. I'm very disappointed that alienware ship such a product with such serious issue. HOPE they will release the official fix soon.

The reason I do my process the way I do it is because I want it to absolutely work with no complications. I see it in the same way as hitting a finishing nail with a sledgehammer haha. But yes you're doing essentially the same thing I have done.

Bottom line, Alienware needs to work with Nvidia to fix this.

yeah, no way am I keeping a product that requires me to install drivers over and over to work. I'm returning it and waiting until they fix it or maybe just get a desktop. it's not worth all the hassle

Graphics Amplifier and GTX 980 returned for a full refund (at least they gave me that without a problem)  I have not lost faith in alienware as a whole, but they need to properly test brand new tech like this if they plan to have it be a major selling point for one of their laptops.  I am still very happy with my Alienware 13, although, now i wish i had gotten a larger screen instead of this.  Hopefully they fix this issue with Nvidia and i can get the Amp again finish my gaming set up the way i wanted to in the first place.  Best of luck to anyone who is still trying to find a fix for this. 

So I have been having this exact same issue with my new Alienware 17 r3. I have tried many different fixes and some work and some do not. HOWEVER, I think I have found another fix. I (as I am sure many of you) use an external monitor via the AGA and keep the lid closed on the laptop .. well if you simply open the lid and close it again, the monitor will flicker and the iGPU gets disabled. I have noticed this "re-enabling" of the iGPU happens every time I restart the laptop, but this seems to fix it. Hope this helps.