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

[reezle]

I do the IT for a cad shop, and we've run the range of video cards, settling on these Quadros (the sub $1000 models). I'd be very curious if this mod just gives the cheap card some of the accelerations the real card has, or if it can actually keep up in the real world. Not just running canned demos, but actually plugging away in Autocad all day long...

A benchmark of a couple of cards would be handy.
(but for the price of a video card, I suppose I could find out myself)

Re:Just Pencil-in the Broken Trace

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I'm not sure. This sort of hack is "unsupported", meaning, if you run into any trouble at all, the CAD software maker, the computer maker and the video card maker do not have to help you. I think it's a nifty little hack, but if you depend on the CAD machine, getting the right card in the first place is less expensive than a day's worth of down time for a user + the tech trying to get it to work again.

The extra cost goes towards developing and maintaining a specific driver set for the very small number of people using a low volume piece of software. The driver will load different pieces, different versions of itself based on what software is running. That's because the software is aggressively tested with specific versions of the driver to work right. That sort of support isn't cheap, and that's what you get when you pay for a Quadro.

Cool, but will pros use it?

[ramk13]

The mod seems simple and useful for some, but most of the people who use these programs work for companies who would probably spend a few hundred more dollars for a fully supported graphics adapter for their piece of software that costs thousands of dollars.

Re:Cool, but will pros use it?

[Reasonable Radical]

I doubt anyone outside a few hardcore individual users will use it. The idea of ANY business letting its employees physically modify their hardware is kinda ludicrous, and very few others will both hear about it and have a reason to do it. Hate to do this to my own post, but since I didn't RTFA, I only deserve it... Disregard that, I suck cocks. *blush*

GPL drivers

[trenien]

I guess this explain the unwillingness from NVidia to release the specs and allow people to make gpl drivers for their cards.

Re:Last time I checked geforces got better FPS..

[Barny]

That's because the Quadro drivers are optimised for accuracy, since you are using them to do real calculations you will rely on, rather than small-ish floating point which is all the regular gforce allow.

There are some other things, optimised anti-aliasing for lines, interface layering over the top of render windows, etc.

For a quick and dirty explanation, see NV docs here (warning, pdf file), page 2 onward is where it gets interesting.

Only it doesn't work

[da.phreak]

I've had a look at the forum thread linked at the very end of the article. Softmodding only works up to the Geforce 6x00 series. It seems that after that NVidia put in some more checks than only the PCI ID. As reported in the thread, there's no performance increase in professional 3D apps, and OpenGL is broken.

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

[TheRaven64]

My understanding is that the difference between the two lines is primarily the drivers. It's not that they are disabling functionality on the chip, it's that they only provide drivers for gaming applications with the consumer cards. If a professional modelling app uses OpenGL and GLSL then it will use these cards just fine. With the pro cards, they also provide optimised drivers for more specialist APIs. These may cost the same amount to develop as the OpenGL and DirectX drivers, but this cost is spread around a lot fewer people (the market for 3DS Max is orders of magnitude smaller than the market for whatever the latest FPS game is) and so these drivers cost a lot more per person.

If you are using the pro drivers with a consumer card, then you are using the drivers unlicensed, which is no different from using any other piece of software unlicensed. If you are doing this to run a pirated application better, then I doubt this will concern you, but if you are a business then it ought to.

If someone else wants to write drivers for all of these bespoke applications then nVidia couldn't complain, but I think they'd have a tough job recouping their investment.