NVIDIA GeForce To Quadro Soft-Mod Guide

[Dashken]

The NVIDIA Quadro family of professional graphics cards are very, very expensive. But everyone knows that Quadro and GeForce graphics cards are virtually identical in hardware.

Obviously, you cannot just use Quadro drivers with your GeForce graphics cards. However, there is an easy way to soft-mod (modify in software) an NVIDIA GeForce desktop graphics card into an NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics card. We will show you just how to do it in this guide.

Here's a quote from the guide :-

"It all revolves around the driver support for professional 3D applications like 3ds Max or Maya. Quadro drivers allow the Quadro to be used to accelerate the rendering operations of such professional 3D applications while GeForce drivers do not. This is the basis for the premium prices NVIDIA (and ATI) charge for their professional-grade graphics cards."

Link : NVIDIA GeForce To Quadro Soft-Mod Guide

[Mac Daddy]

Nice article and a great start cool stuff Gen welcome to the team

[generalRage1982hrv]

thanks bro hehehehhehe

[Mac Daddy]

Originally Posted by generalRage1982hrv

thanks bro hehehehhehe

+ rep

[64bit]

I would like to comment on "Step 1 : Identify & Verify Your GPU" of this article.

According to the guide, the card used is Geforce 8800 (G80) and under the nvdisp.inf file, there are 2 Quadro cards that uses the same G80 core, which is Quadro FX5600 and Quadro FX4600, how do I know which Quadro to chose if both are using the same core? The guide did not explain it well in choosing a Quadro card.

Please help. Thank you

[ChampionLLY]

That's a very economic way to turn a geforce into a very expensive quadro.. too bad I have no use for quadros at all

+rep

[Max_87]

I hate to burst your bubble, but softmodding GeForce 8 series to Quadro DOES NOT work. AFAIK, NVIDIA has been hard locking their non-Quadro silicons since GeForce 7 series. ATI has been doing the same thing too since 2-3 generations ago. GeForce 6 series are still softmodable though.

Yes, you can make the drivers and OS recognize it as a Quadro card, but you won't get performance increase in professional 3D applications such as Maya. Try run some professional 3D benchmarks for comparison and you will see what I mean.

EDIT: I think it only gave a slight improvement in D3D based professional 3D applications like 3ds Max (and screws up the driver at the same time, causing it unable to run OpenGL applications properly). It is confirmed that it doesn't work with OpenGL based professional 3D applications.

[CALLOFDUTY05]

Excellent guide Dashken.Will HAVE TO give this a try.Thanks.

[Adrian Wong]

Originally Posted by 64bit

I would like to comment on "Step 1 : Identify & Verify Your GPU" of this article.

According to the guide, the card used is Geforce 8800 (G80) and under the nvdisp.inf file, there are 2 Quadro cards that uses the same G80 core, which is Quadro FX5600 and Quadro FX4600, how do I know which Quadro to chose if both are using the same core? The guide did not explain it well in choosing a Quadro card.

Please help. Thank you

From the guide :

In the example below, the GPU of the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS is G80 and the Device ID is 10D - 0193.

You will note that the correct Quadro string has both the GPU and Device ID number. But you should still verify that the hardware configuration of the Quadro card corresponds to your GeForce card.

[Adrian Wong]

Originally Posted by Max_87

I hate to burst your bubble, but softmodding GeForce 8 series to Quadro DOES NOT work. AFAIK, NVIDIA has been hard locking their non-Quadro silicons since GeForce 7 series. ATI has been doing the same thing too since 2-3 generations ago. GeForce 6 series are still softmodable though.

Yes, you can make the drivers and OS recognize it as a Quadro card, but you won't get performance increase in professional 3D applications such as Maya. Try run some professional 3D benchmarks for comparison and you will see what I mean.

EDIT: I think it only gave a slight improvement in D3D based professional 3D applications like 3ds Max (and screws up the driver at the same time, causing it unable to run OpenGL applications properly). It is confirmed that it doesn't work with OpenGL based professional 3D applications.

Yeah, Gen will be testing that out on 3ds Max soon. Hopefully, we will get some definitive word on whether it really works.. and how well it works.