NVIDIA GeForce To Quadro Soft-Mod Guide

Discussion in 'Reviews & Articles' started by Dashken, May 9, 2008.

  1. Dashken

    Dashken Administrator!

    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 :-
    [​IMG]

    Link : NVIDIA GeForce To Quadro Soft-Mod Guide
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2008
    2 people like this.
  2. Mac Daddy

    Mac Daddy Pickin' Da Gitfiddle

    Nice article and a great start cool stuff Gen welcome to the team :thumb:
     
  3. generalRage1982hrv

    generalRage1982hrv ARP Reviewer

    thanks bro hehehehhehe
     
    1 person likes this.
  4. Mac Daddy

    Mac Daddy Pickin' Da Gitfiddle

    + rep ;)
     
  5. 64bit

    64bit Newbie

    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
     
  6. ChampionLLY

    ChampionLLY News Writer

    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
     
  7. Max_87

    Max_87 huehuehue

    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.
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2008
  8. CALLOFDUTY05

    CALLOFDUTY05 Newbie

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

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    From the guide :

    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.
     
  10. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    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.
     
  11. generalRage1982hrv

    generalRage1982hrv ARP Reviewer

    when you chose model always look on same hardware parts on it
    example 5600 haves 1.5 Gb of ddr3
    and 4600 haves 768 Mb of ddr3
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2008
  12. generalRage1982hrv

    generalRage1982hrv ARP Reviewer

    well it works here
    anyway quadro drivers are different than regular driver
    it have more optimizations for 3Dmax and it also have additional driver to boost quadro performance in the 3dmax
    just take a look on texture fillrate it have been boosted by 4GTexel/s
    well regular 4600 works on gpu 700Mhz and 900ddr
    and i dident clocked this one
     
  13. Max_87

    Max_87 huehuehue

    Yeah it should be tested. From what I read, he should be getting up to 30% improvement in certain rendering scenes in 3ds max. OpenGL based applications will not work though, such as SolidWorks.

    The last known "perfect" Quadro softmod on GeForce was 6 series. From 7 series onwards, you can only get a partially working Quadro by softmodding.
     
  14. generalRage1982hrv

    generalRage1982hrv ARP Reviewer

    last good setup was when cards was not laser cuted
     
  15. Max_87

    Max_87 huehuehue

    It's only theoretical fill rate and we don't know if GPU-Z actually calculates it correctly. I wouldn't consider this as 'working' if there aren't any improvements in professional 3D applications.

    Run some pro 3D applications and compare, both D3D and OpenGL based and show us the results.

    :confused: :rolleyes:
     
  16. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    He meant the last good setup was when the cards were not laser-cut.
     
  17. Max_87

    Max_87 huehuehue

    I know, I just don't get what laser-cut has got anything to do with this.
     
  18. ChampionLLY

    ChampionLLY News Writer

    I was wondering too when I saw the above posts, how's laser-cut going to determine whether the card can be soft-modded or not?
     
  19. generalRage1982hrv

    generalRage1982hrv ARP Reviewer

    laser cut is done on gpus core to lock pipelines for extra shaders
    on older cards you was able to unlock pipelines but now it just sux
     
  20. Hegh

    Hegh Newbie

    Device ID

    I noticed that GPU-Z detects the device ID as 10D-0193 in the example, but then he selects a Quadro card with a device ID ending with 019E. How do you determine which ID is correct?

    I ask because my card has an ID ending with 0400, but the closest Quadro card has an ID ending with 040A, if I recall correctly...
     

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