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NVIDIA GeForce To Quadro Software Mod

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Sat May 10, 2008 04:21 AM
from the you-bought-it-might-as-well-use-the-whole-thing dept.
Graphics Software Hardware
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.'"
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Submission: NVIDIA GeForce To Quadro Soft-Mod Guide by babyshiori (1091815)
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  • Just Pencil-in the Broken Trace (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pipingguy (566974) * on Saturday May 10 2008, @04:29AM (#23359512) Homepage
    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 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by reezle (239894) on Saturday May 10 2008, @04:40AM (#23359542) Homepage
      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)
      • That's the trick - there are so many combinations that a apples-to-apples comparison is impossible (and so expensive), so people go along with whatever the existing trend is.

        I've not seen noticeable differences between a Quadro 256MB card and a generic 128MB card but perhaps my applications are different from other users'.
      • If you do, make sure to return the results to Tech ARP. Or post them in the forums of Guru3D, where the tuning app was made. Other people might be interested, and they did some hard work to create the applications.

        Of course, if you look in the Guru3D forums, the hack isn't new, and I don't know what Tech ARP really did other than write a tiny article around it. Bring it in the spotlight I suppose.

        http://www.guru3d.com/category/rivatunerfaq/ [guru3d.com]

      • Re:Just Pencil-in the Broken Trace (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Jeff DeMaagd (2015) on Saturday May 10 2008, @06:10AM (#23359854) Homepage Journal
        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.

      • Re:Just Pencil-in the Broken Trace (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Znork (31774) on Saturday May 10 2008, @07:30AM (#23360136)
        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.
          • IIRC someone who used to work for Nvidia posted that the difference between the Quadro and the regular cards was the QA that went into output testing. Basically nobody cared if the consumer card didn't give you a pixel perfect representation of the data being sent it as long as it ran fast, smooth, and looked "close enough". Whereas with the Quadro they went through a lot more extra QA testing to make sure that it rendered the data it was sent accurately.But that is what I heard anyway,so I could be wrong.

      • Re:Just Pencil-in the Broken Trace (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Molochi (555357) on Saturday May 10 2008, @10:32AM (#23361208)
        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.

          • Re:Just Pencil-in the Broken Trace (Score:4, Insightful)

            by GregPK (991973) on Saturday May 10 2008, @07:11PM (#23365314)
            Seriously, I was in an internship and my boss wouldn't even let me touch the inside of the computer to install new Ram Sticks.

            Think about it, if something fails anywhere would you rather it be on the IT approved failure that you can get remedied for free. Or would you rather trying to explain to your boss that you hacked something to work and it took a weeks time fix.

            Seriously, Cad shops, on average, are responsible for about 100 dollars an hour worth of work. At that rate, its in their best interest not to be down at all.

            The difference between something that runs perfectly and something that is hacked is not something you want to explain to your boss. Especially when IT or someone else comes around to update the drivers, etc.

            It's all about smoothness and transition when dealing with Cad. I've had a batch printing issue when working with retail focus files in MAP3D that took me a nearly a week to remedy.

            This hack is great for students or those just starting out in the business. But, not in a full-time shop.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by dbIII (701233)
              It's AutoCAD from AutoDesk - the entire reason for it's existance is that it runs on cheap hardware. That is why people have been willing to overlook it's shortcomings for a couple of decades.

  • Will it.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 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.
    • It would be interesting to see if it enables the Quadro features in the driver. (Stereo stuff...)

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by t35t0r (751958)
        yes that would be interesting, but you'd still need a dongle like the nuvision 60gx NSR box to get the signal out of the dvi/vga connectors because it doesn't have a 3 pin mini din connection.

  • Cool, but will pros use it? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ramk13 (570633) on Saturday May 10 2008, @04:51AM (#23359576)
    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.
    • You're missing the point. You already bought the hardware, they're just not letting you use it fully.

      It's about time for open drivers and sane business models.

      • 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*
      • The first time one of your "new ideas" breaks your company's CAD software and your call to support goes unanswered because you were using an unsupported modification, thereby rendering thousands of dollars worth of both hardware and software pretty much useless, I expect your company will change their tune.

        Companies that have been around long enough have usually learned the hard way that it pays to do things above board. Murphy's Law exists for a reason. Any failure point, given a long enough gestation period, *will* fail. And using an unsupported modification in a professional setting is, if nothing else, a failure point.
  • I doubt I would *need* to do so, but does this hack work on laptop nVidia cargs (their GeForce Go or Mobile series)?

    I already use a desktop driver with a modded INF file from http://laptopvideo2go.com/ [laptopvideo2go.com] (nVidia's drivers for their older - 7600 in my case - laptop cards are crap, especially on Vista), so I'm not afraid of installing a desktop driver on a laptop, but might this driver make demands of the card that the mobile versions are incapable of?
    • The article pretty clearly spells out that there has to exist a quadro card that has the same chipset as your current geforce card.
  • What exactly is this enabling? I get that it's for "professional" applications, but what features do those use that aren't turned on normally?
    • I mean, sure, it's cool, but a software house using Maya and 3DS max would want to real gear, and people not in that category would be unlikely to need such a hack. Especially since you *really* don't want to be using hacked up code with your Gforce card.

      This does not detract from the cleverness of those who did it, but in the final analysis it's virtually pointless.
      • Think graphics student. They probably have access to the software for their class but probably don't have the money for a card that costs as much as their desktop. Also as someone above pointed out there is no Quadro to Go card and laptops are popular with students (heck you might use it to give a presentation on a laptop in the professional world).

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by darthflo (1095225)
          There's quite obviously no Quadro to Go card, as nobody but Alienware (in one model, iirc) ever cared to implement swappable mobile graphics modules with the intent of actually selling different adapters.
          There, however, are several notebooks equipped with mobile quadro chips, most notably Lenovo's ThinkPad Tp Mobile Workstations [lenovo.com]. There's even some T series ThinkPads (without the p) equipped with QuadroFX chips.

          Also, note that the discussed hack identifies a GeForce series card as it's equivalent Quadro
      • Yup. Got that part. But what are the actual operations being performed, in more detail than "professional work"? Yeah, Maya, 3DS -- but how are those different from other programs that render 3D images?
      • I'm sure game modders would want this. I know my friend spends a lot of time rendering buildings and textures. Also, he recently did some freelance work rendering buildings for a local car commercial. So basically the 3D hobbyist will probably want to do this.

    • What exactly is this enabling? I get that it's for "professional" applications, but what features do those use that aren't turned on normally?

      The application can ask the video card to perform some intensive work, farming it off from the main CPU of the PC for improved performance.

      With the standard GeForce drivers, the video card will refuse to do this. However, with the Quadro drivers, it'll do it just fine.

      The article tells you how to persuade the system to use Quadro drivers as opposed to GeForce. It requires some minor tweaking but it doesn't seem particularly dangerous.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Svartalf (2997)
        Nope. What happens with the Quadro drivers more than anything else is that they do combining and optimization of immediate mode rendering
        requests, namely doing "write this poly, now write this one, now write this one, etc..." which is the easier way to do CAD software rendering. It can
        only be "sped up" by a little bit, taking advantage of the fragment shader path in a minimal manner. Games, on the other hand, present a command list to
        the engine and then say "Go render this pool of commands, come back t

        • 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.

          • Re:And THIS is why they don't release specs! (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Svartalf (2997) on Saturday May 10 2008, @09:10AM (#23360616) Homepage
            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.
    • Can I ask an uninformed question here? If these very expensive cards are virtually the same as the less expensive cards except for some software hack, why wouldn't gamers make use of the hack to mod their cards? Or is this already widely being done among the overclocking crowd? Or do these Quadro cards have no benefit for gamers?

      There's something that bothers me about companies that sell the exact same product for two prices and the only difference is some switch is thrown on the more expensive one. But

      • Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by montge (253328) on Saturday May 10 2008, @07:33AM (#23360152)
        Ah, to your comment "There's something that bothers me about companies that sell the exact same product for two prices and the only difference is some switch is thrown on the more expensive one. But maybe there's more to it than that." There is something more to it...

        While there may be only minor technical differences to the cards, the real difference is in the software. In a nutshell when you're buying the "inexpensive" card, you're not paying for the extra costs that NVidia (or ATI) incurs when they must expend resources to provide drivers that support the high-end applications. So unless you want consumers that could care less about the high end features to pay more, and the people that care about these features to pay less, you'll probably be happier with differentiated products in this way.

        Don't forget companies are there to make money, and if they're not able to do this then either the company or product is likely to disappear. Personally I'd rather have NVidia around, if I need the high-end features, I'll figure out how to afford it...

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Otto (17870)
          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:So... (Score:5, Informative)

        by drinkypoo (153816) <martin.espinoza@gmail.com> on Saturday May 10 2008, @08:18AM (#23360344) Homepage Journal

        Can I ask an uninformed question here? If these very expensive cards are virtually the same as the less expensive cards except for some software hack, why wouldn't gamers make use of the hack to mod their cards?

        Because the Quadro's extra features are not beneficial to gaming. I have a Compaq nw9440 with QuadroFX 1500 graphics (256MB, PCIEx16.) The additional features are that you can have the card render to a buffer (GPU-accelerated rendering) and you can use 10 bits per channel (r,g,b) color. Whee! Neither is useful for gaming.

        The additional color depth could be neat, if it's even used when your source textures only have 8 bits per channel. I don't know the answer to that. But let's face it, 24 bit color is probably enough for gaming and frankly, I never minded so much when I had to use 16 bit color back in the day because my computers were weak. this is pretty much the only cutting-edge system I've ever had and it was only cutting-edge for a month :)

        There WAS a SoftQuadro hack for some of the older geforce cards which had corresponding quadros. Quadros were offered with a lot more memory too, which is not something you can fix with a driver... But the mobile quadros certainly don't have more memory, so there's nothing lost there...

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Chibi Merrow (226057)

          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

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Znork (31774)
      From what it sounds like, nothing. The 'professional' applications simply require the quadro driver (heck, the standard drivers might even be preventing acceleration if you have a process named 'autocad' running) and the quadro driver doesn't run on the consumer cards (not because of any hardware difference, but because it checks the pci id, which is what they change in the article).

      Well, probably one of the main reasons NVidia doesn't want to open up their drivers.
  • ...than Quadro (workstation) GPUs.
    • 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 [nvidia.com] (warning, pdf file), page 2 onward is where it gets interesting.

  • GPL drivers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by trenien (974611) on Saturday May 10 2008, @05:34AM (#23359730)
    I guess this explain the unwillingness from NVidia to release the specs and allow people to make gpl drivers for their cards.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Ant P. (974313)
      It's also proof that hiding your source code only delays the inevitable...

    • Re:GPL drivers (Score:4, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo (153816) <martin.espinoza@gmail.com> on Saturday May 10 2008, @08:20AM (#23360368) Homepage Journal
      The simple truth is that a lot of the "magic" is in the driver and they want to try to protect this stuff. However, an even simpler truth is that if you release your drivers then the public will help you write them. As intel has stepped into the 3D market with its open source drivers - easy to justify since they're not chasing the #1 spot in quality - the other makers have had to look hard at how their closed source is going to cost them in the long run. Both ATI (AMD) and nVidia have come around to the right idea, and now it's just a question of how long it takes to make their original drivers irrelevant :)
  • Last time I did that I moved two micro-resistors.
    I just used a jewelers loup and a small tip on my soldering iron.Found the instructions online somewhere.Worked well.

  • Only it doesn't work (Score:5, Informative)

    by da.phreak (820640) on Saturday May 10 2008, @06:35AM (#23359936)
    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.
    • quadro will still outperform the geforce by a mile. all this hack does is allow you to use quadro drivers on your geforce, not run your geforce like a quadro. this is only useful for students who can't afford a quadro. if you wanted to actually do anything really intensive you'll still need a quadro. they are most expensive for a reason you know.

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by pipatron (966506)

        quadro will still outperform the geforce by a mile.

        What makes you think that? Did you benchmark this mod and compared with a quadro with the same chipset? Do you think everyone that did so are liars? Or are you just working for nvidia?

    • I guess now I see why NVIDIA is reluctant to release open source drivers for their hardware.

      +10

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ThePhilips (752041)

      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 intr

    • Re:On Drivers (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jeff DeMaagd (2015) on Saturday May 10 2008, @06:19AM (#23359886) Homepage Journal
      It isn't necessarily so evil. You interpret the value to only be in the circuitry, but the cost of the drivers to be able to use that circuitry is a different matter.

      Game users is a very broad base, develop game-optimized drivers and you can develop very cheaply, per person.

      The users of engineering software is a very tiny user base, and the cost of maintaining drivers for software that may have several thousand users instead of several million needs to by paid for by those that need to use the engineering software. The rendering for engineering software is optimized for accuracy, game drivers are optimized for speed. There is quite a disparity between the different user bases in size and what they need, so I don't have a problem with charging different prices.
    • It's not the same product. If all you require when purchasing a graphics card is the hardware, good luck to you.

      Tech ARP claims that the Quadro is much more profitable, but I wonder how they (and presumably you) can reach that conclusion. If the price premium is apparently justified by the additional software cost, then the profit margins are directly tied to development costs and number of cards sold. Without that information, you're both speculating.

      • If you actually RTFA, then you know that TechARP is innocent by-stander.

        On other side, nVidia has a long story with RivaTuner which among others enables that hack too.

        Driver encryption, option name mangling, registry tricks employed by nVidia drivers are precisely there to deter RivaTuner folks.

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