Thursday, December 31, 2009

nVidia Quadro vs. Geforce & ATI FireGL vs. Radeon

"Quadros are essentially Geforces, and FireGL's are essentially Radeons. Same GPUs."

I was reading it all over the internet and I could not believe it. Many forums and discussions have this subject on their topics. To make a long story short, it looks like GeForce and Radeon VGA cards are given to the public (home users) for a lower price and drivers are optimized mostly for games, while Quadro and FireGL are given to the public (professional market) for a much higher price and drivers are optimized for 3D applications (3dsMAX, Maya, SolidWorks, Catia etc.) and/or 2D applications (Photoshop). Hackers successfully converted GeForce/Radeon cards into Quadro/FireGL cards, operation not 100% completed at the end (due to differences in hardware), but close to it. I am ready to take this challenge and I'll post updates as soon as I'll start this project. Until then, from time to time I'll post here links related to the subject, to have them at hand.

Some thoughts taken from discussions:
Cleeve - Hardware editor, Tom's Hardware Guide [11-29-2007]
"The pro (Quadro, FireGL) drivers allow for more control over certain settings in CAD apps, and are geared to accelerate OpenGL pro apps instead of games. The last time I read a review with a gaming card vs. it's pro counterpart playing a game, the pro drivers tended to accelerate games slower than the consumer drivers, and the pro drivers tended to accelerate CAD apps much faster than consumer drivers."


Links:
Quadro vs. GeForce [PDF file]

ATI Radeon To ATI FireGL Mod Guide Rev. 5.1 [article]
NVIDIA GeForce To Quadro Soft-Mod Guide Rev. 4.1 [article]
NVIDIA GeForce To Quadro Soft-Mod Guide [article]

Gaming vs. Professional Graphics Cards [thread, Tom's Hardware Forum]
GeForce -to-> Quadro Soldering Mod [thread, overclockers.com Forum]
Possible? If so, how? FX5900->Quadro / 6800->Quadro [thread, guru3d.com Forum]
It's true. 8800GTS is a perfect Quadro now (3DSMAX9 ONLY!!!) [thread, guru3d.com Forum]
7800/7900/7600/7300 can't be "unlocked" or "Quadro-fied", here is why [thread, guru3d.com Forum]

RivaTuner [software for modding and unlock pro features in GeForce/Radeon cards]


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Updated / Actualizat: 2009-12-31.

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