NVIDIA GeForce To Quadro Software Mod

babyshiori writes "The NVIDIA Quadro family of professional graphics cards are very, very expensive. But many people know 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 an NVIDIA GeForce desktop graphics card into an NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics card. Tech ARP shows us just how to do it. '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.'"

Comments

Just Pencil-in the Broken Trace

[pipingguy]

I work in an engineering field where we use Quadro cards for visualization of largish process plants in an AutoCAD 3D environment.

This type of work is not as intensive as 3D animation.

Over the years I've seen not much difference between "professional" and "consumer" video cards even though the cost between the two can be $600 or more.

Even with relatively lame, $200 cards the walkthrus are pretty responsive when using the proper viewing software (the "walkthrus" are typically specially created for responsiveness so we can zoom to detail we need to see).

Perhaps sluggish performance is a result of demos given by people who intentionally attach one entire GB of 3D models to one session and use that to demonstrate (even though no 3D modeler would ever do such a thing).

Re:Just Pencil-in the Broken Trace

[Znork]

From what it sounds like, the mod doesn't actually change anything, it just modifies the PCI id so the driver thinks the card is Quadro branded instead.

Like so much else in the 'corporate computing' world, it's merely rebranded generics, with a heftier pricetag. The hardware is usually the same, and probably in this case too. Much easier to use software to artificially prevent cross-market competition; as most corporate purchasers aren't spending money out of their own pocket they don't particularly care that they're getting scammed.

Re:Just Pencil-in the Broken Trace

[Molochi]

General consensus for the softmod ITFA in TechARP's own forum is that it doesn't actually improve pro app performance (GL, 3ds, etc..) for newer (later than 6800/NV45) GPUs.

It's kinda sad that this made the front page on slashdot.

Will it....

[Anonymous Coward]

But will it blend?

D'oh, sorry, force of habit. I meant, will it work with Blender? It's atrociously slow on a GeForce.

In fact, will it work on Linux full stop? It all appears to be MS based.

Last time I checked geforces got better FPS..

[distantbody]

...than Quadro (workstation) GPUs.

Re:Summary is misleading

[ThePhilips]

I do not have up-to-date info.

But in past, video cards were used to render previews and some special effects (e.g. particles). It wasn't pure hardware rendering - something was rendered in software, then blended together with with image rendered by/in hardware.

The main difference in the times was that cheap cards didn't supported all the fancy color spaces/modes nor did they had bandwidth to transfer huge textures (smaller parts of scenes pre-rendered in software) to cards.

Actual architecture introduced by nVidia (generic GPU responsible for everything) makes all that soft-modding possible. Besides some bus bandwidth issues (Quadros have wider internal buses) I do not see any problem with the hack.

I easily believe that drivers for cheaper GeForces might intentionally skip some advanced functionality, which isn't relevant to games, but is important to 3D modeling software.

Re:So...

[Otto]

Well, then it really sounds as if they ought to be selling the software separately in that case.

Bundling the software with the card is fine and all that, but if there's literally no real hardware difference, why have to "hack" the thing at all? Simply sell the pro-drivers separately, then if somebody needs them, they can buy them.

Re:And THIS is why they don't release specs!

[Svartalf]

Heh... There's some extra silicon in the Quadros and little extra in the FireGL lineup. To be sure, it's not needed, but nice.

However, the difference in the drivers is that they've got a combine and optimize operation layer in the workstation drivers
that dramatically accelerates immediate mode operations. CAD, by it's nature, will be difficult to code for the mode of rendering
that games use- and it's difficult to accelerate past a point the immediate mode operations without some help. So, they provide
a special driver that does combining and optimization (dropping off of unknowingly done redundant ops, etc...) and hands it off
to the fast path rendering mode that games use.

If you want to gain most of the speed, skip using the stuff unlicensed- all someone needs to see a good portion of the speed
would be to write an intercept DLL or LD_PRELOAD .so that does at least the combining of immediate mode ops. Now, this is
making it sound vastly easier than it would be to do (Writing it and getting it right is NOT simple or easy- period...) but
it IS doable and it explains why they ask a larger price for the workstation cards than they do for consumer parts more than
anything else.

Re:So...

[Chibi Merrow]

The additional features are that you can have the card render to a buffer (GPU-accelerated rendering)

Now I may be totally off base on this, but I'm pretty sure when I do render-to-texture type operations on a GeForce card they're hardware accelerated, and that is VERY useful for gaming (it's the most common way to implement "bloom" for instance). Most cards offer >10-bit color depth now, as well, which is useful for HDR type effects. Of course most monitors are still clamped to 8-bit, but that's besides the point... :)