softmod your gforce to a quadrofx

[Joe Carney]

Want to save a little money and unlock the enhanced opengl features on a gforce 8x series card? Both chips are apparantly the same.

The example used in the article is from a 8800 series to fx4600.

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=539&pgno=1

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

This comes up a lot on various 3D GFX forums... Yes, you can do a soft-mod and load Quadro drivers on GeForce cards. No, unfortunately, the chips are not quite the same as they're lacking some of the key hardware features that make a Quadro card a Quadro. However, the chips are mostly the same and some people do find it useful to run Quadro drivers as those drivers are sometimes better optimized for various pro applications. If you go dig up and read the "fine print" with various quadro mods like SoftQuadro, you'll see that the few missing functions are handled via software on the GeForce, sometimes not properly either...

 

[Joe Carney]

Thanks for the feedback. Caveat Emptor. Still, it's an interesting concept and doesn't seem to hurt the card.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

No, doesn't hurt the card physically. Some of the mods do require firmware hacks, just be sure you have the ability to re-flash the card with proper firmware if needed.

IMO, if you're trying to squeeze more performance out of a graphics card, you''ll get more out of overclocking than running Quadro drivers. But like I said, some people find it useful to run Quadro drivers for specific applications.