Some Alienware m15 R5 laptops powered by the RTX 3070 are reporting missing core counts according to users who voiced their complaints on online forums and threads. The mobile version of the RTX 3070 is supposed to have 5,120 CUDA cores but only 4,608 cores are being reported which is even less than the RTX 3060 Ti. The missing 512 CUDA cores have resulted in a 10% reduction in the RTX 3070’s performance. This reduced core count has only been affecting m15 R5 laptops, while other models seem to be properly displaying the full number of cores as of now.
It is not uncommon for mobile versions of GPUs to have slight differences from their desktop counterparts. We’ve seen this done on several occasions to reduce power consumption and limit the amount of heat dissipated in laptops. In fact, the RTX 3070 in question has 768 fewer cores than the desktop version not accounting for the extra missing cores.
The Alienware laptop does in fact have 5120 cores.
The good news is that the issue seems to be a software related one, meaning the graphics card could actually be as powerful as it is marketed to be. Some users have decided to take matters into their own hands and fixed the issue before Dell provided a solution. Multiple m15 R5 laptop owners have found success in flashing the vBIOS, resulting in the proper core count of 5120 being displayed in GPU-Z. However, users may want to hold off for now and wait for an official update. Flashing the vBIOS could be a risky procedure and may permanently brick your graphics card if a failure occurs. Thankfully, those courageous enough to try this have reported a noticeable bump in performance, which means the issue is not due to hardware restrictions.
