Dell selling Alienware m15 R5 GeForce RTX 3070 laptops with 4608 Cores instead of 5120

Alienware laptops get RTX 3070 with reduced core count

Have Max-Q optimizations gone too far? 

Dell Alienware m15 R5 is a premium gaming laptop equipped with Intel 10th Gen Core “Comet Lake-H” CPUs or alternatively with AMD 5000H series “Cezanne” as a special Ryzen Edition. These laptops are on the market for quite a while, in fact, Intel models already have a successor with Tiger Lake-H series under the m15 R6 series.

With all that in mind it seems surprising to see reports from users who allegedly received their Alienware laptops with different specifications than officially advertised. According to multiple users on Reddit and NotebookReview forums, some RTX 3070 configured Alienware laptops have reduced core count to 4608 cores (that’s 512 cores missing). The difference allegedly only affects m15 R5 laptops, but R4 models seem to offer a full core count.

NVIDIA RTX 3070 in Alienware m15 R5 and m15 R4,Source: EpoSaurus

By disabling 512 CUDA cores Dell has reduced the performance of RTX 3070 Laptop GPU by 10%. There are no changes in the clock speeds. It is quite common for laptop manufacturers to use different BIOSes with pre-applied Total Graphics Power (TGP) to meet strict laptop thermal characteristics. What seems uncommon though is a reduction of GPU cores to meet the target.

Users who reported the issue have already reached out to Dell for a comment on a situation.

Source: Reddit, TechPowerUP Forums, NotebookReview Forums