Dell reported the following statement: “Last week, we discovered our new Alienware m15 gaming system was limiting CUDA Cores on 3070 configurations. We have released a firmware update to help resolve the incorrect setting. Please check out the support page here for the updated vBios.” Alienware m15 owners will able to get the full power out of their laptop.
Dell’s latest Alienware m15 gaming laptop has the martian-themed machine while scrapping Intel in endorsement of using the AMD Ryzen 5000 series. It is the first Alienware portable to use an AMD processor since 2007. The few m15 models are reporting 4,608 CUDA cores for the GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card rather than the standard 5,120 which is the ‘mistake’ for intentional design choice by Dell.
Jarrod’sTech reported that it became suspicious of the machine when benchmarks for the m15 R5 didn’t correlate with other results from gaming laptops using RTX 3070 hardware. The decision to gimp the GPU was made by its engineering team after ‘careful testing and design choices to bring the most stable and best performance possible. The more CUDA cores could be unlocked via a future update.
Tom’s Hardware contacted Dell to emerge that the limitation is an error that is developed for a mid-July release. It documented that “We have been made aware that an incorrect setting in Alienware’s vBIOS is limiting CUDA Cores on RTX 3070 configurations. This is an error that we are working diligently to correct as soon as possible. We’re expediting a resolution through validation and expect to have this resolved as early as mid-June. In the interim, we do not recommend using a vBios from another Alienware platform to correct this issue. We apologize for any frustration this has caused.”
Reddit thread also started to fix the issue by flashing the VBIOS of the RTX 3070 in the m15 R4 onto the new m15 R5.
VideoCardz noted that the coverage have crippled a 10% reduction in cores to Dell’s claims of this being a mistake. The serious Nvidia with ensuring manufacturers using their mobile GPUs are listing key information like power TGP and clock speeds.
The entire situation is very unusual to cause long-term performance for the issues were fixed manually of the laptop. It makes that the CUDA cores when Nvidia manufacturers free reign on clock speeds and power to help increase battery life.
The Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition R5 is available starting at $1,794 with an option of either the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX or Ryzen 7 5800H, and either the RTX 3060 or RTX 3070 Nvidia mobile GPUs.
