SoftQuadro FX 4000 Beta!

[Brettzies]

I have a 6800(nu) and I remember trying this a few months ago. You're talking about going from 12 vertex pipelines to 16 using the rivaTurner? My understanding is that in some boards it was disabled in software and some in hardware. Looks like you got lucky. There's a setting somewhere in the diagnostics which will show whether your board is capable of this modification using the drivers. Good deal for you though. Always worth checking out.

[rakoon]

PNY 6800NU ? NU? Which model r u talking about?

I know that PNY produce GT and ULTRA...

[Prophet2k]

Woo, first post,

Anyhow NU = non-ultra. I think this means the version he has soft-modded was the bog standard 6800 with 128Mb 128bit ram and only 8/12(?)pipes. Not the gt or ultra which are both 16pipes and 256mb 256bit ram :D

Proph.

[brudney]

OC Nighthawk, it's a great news indeed :thumbsup: now i know what i'm gonna buy myself for christmas. sweet.

[Brettzies]

PNY 6800NU ? NU? Which model r u talking about?

I know that PNY produce GT and ULTRA...I believe he means non-Ultra, which is why your pixel/vertex pipeline would be at 12 instead of 16. You wouldn't have to do this if you had a GT or Ultra, except for the softQuadro part if you want to run it in that mode.

[OC-NightHawk]

Alright, there is trouble brewing. One ass is going to ruin the fun for us all because he couldn't keep his mouth shut when he had nothing nice to say.

anyhow, you haven't discovered the possibility to change
gf6,8k to q4k and you want to include that in your rt in the
way that rt should be a part of the solution, but the solution to that modification exsists without rt, which makes it obsolete.. is maybe that the reason for insisting on nvstrap??Unwinder's [the guy behind rivatuner and softquadro] response to this

It is already not fun, ppl become really cruel when they WANT to get something. I treat it as a personal insult. About a year ago such comments already caused SoftFireGL development to be freezed, now you've just killed any wish to work on that damn NVStrap and RT. Say bue to NVStrap 1.7, it will be excluded from RC15.3. Development is freezed.I urge you guys to head over to guru3D and send Unwinder a nice request not demand for softquadro to be finished. Either that or lynch the Laverdir jerk that killed the joy. Seriously why can't some people just shut up instead of insult the creator because he won't let rt actually flash to bios.

I have a 6800(nu) and I remember trying this a few months ago. You're talking about going from 12 vertex pipelines to 16 using the rivaTurner? My understanding is that in some boards it was disabled in software and some in hardware. Looks like you got lucky. There's a setting somewhere in the diagnostics which will show whether your board is capable of this modification using the drivers. Good deal for you though. Always worth checking out.Mine where disabled in hardware, there is a way to force them on. My 16 pipes work fine.


PNY 6800NU ? NU? Which model r u talking about?

I know that PNY produce GT and ULTRA...Yes I'm using a PNY 6800NU 325MHz core 700MHz ram (NU= Non Ultra, its just a term people have been using to describe the card quickly). It's the $299 card at CompUSA.

OC Nighthawk, it's a great news indeed :thumbsup: now i know what i'm gonna buy myself for christmas. sweet.Then I urge you to go send a pm to unwinder at guru3d and nicely request the softmod and let him know that the guy that insulted him is just one unimportant spec not worthy of his time or attention. I hope if enough people request for him to finish it the way he wants nicely maybe he will have fun again and do it.

Heres the link to where it all went south.

edit: ok I can't believe I forgot to post the link. Oh well it doesn't matter now. He calmed down and decided to continue. :D

[rakoon]

Ok..but did u test performances of ur new Quadro Fx 4000 (alias 6800NU) in apps like Max or Maya or anything else?
Which RivaTuner or procedure did u follow ?

Regards,
rak

[DanSilverman]

While I would agree that people should encourage development of this software, I wonder why the developers ego is so fragile. Why does one person's comments cause him to stop development? Either he already wanted to stop and just wanted an excuse or he really wants an ego boost from people (i.e. he is hoping all his fans will come out and tell him how much they want this software developed).

[Knotter8]

The viewport performance actually slows down with this softmod !? Weird. I got a pc with a Geforce 2GTS softmodded to a Quadro2 Pro here ; Maya viewport perf is definately faster with the mod.

If the opposite is the case for the NV40's I won't bother despite better IQ.

[OC-NightHawk]

Knotter the viewport slows down only because I went into OpenGL settings in Max and turned on the highest mapping options. It's just that the quadro actually does a nice quality image when you crank the settings up as opposed to the geForces lip service. Maya speed is just as fast as the GeForce completly unaffected. :D

Anybody know what version of maxtreme is meant for Max6.1?

[OC-NightHawk]

While I would agree that people should encourage development of this software, I wonder why the developers ego is so fragile. Why does one person's comments cause him to stop development? Either he already wanted to stop and just wanted an excuse or he really wants an ego boost from people (i.e. he is hoping all his fans will come out and tell him how much they want this software developed).Remember this is his hobby. He does it for fun. I don't think its too unreasonable to stroke his ego a bit to remind him why he does it. After all in return we get a softmod and a great utility for FREE that gives us more control over our cards.

Edit: I personally asked him if he would do it nicely. Thats why he started it, I think. He never said if it was just me or others asking too. But there wouldn't have even been a beta version if people had not asked him to do it in the first place. This was a favor by him to us.

[Knotter8]

the viewport slows down only because I went into OpenGL settings in Max and turned on the highest mapping options. :D

Anybody know what version of maxtreme is meant for Max6.1?
Ah, thanx for the enlightenment. A friend of mine was scratching his head why his new QFX1000
was slower in OpenGL MAX than D3D MAX. I assume it's possible to downscale those mapping settings in OpenGL 3DS Max ? If so, I can help my buddy.

[OC-NightHawk]

GAME ON! :D

After a day to cool off it seems Unwinder has decided to continue working on the softquadro and RT.

[rakoon]

Knotter, i'm surprised that QFX1000 sucks with hi def textures...probably i was expecting more than it could really does.

Which other features a softmodded 6800@QFX4000 doesn't run than those available on real board?

How many polys do u think i can move with softmod?

[OC-NightHawk]

Knotter, i'm surprised that QFX1000 sucks with hi def textures...probably i was expecting more than it could really does.

Which other features a softmodded 6800@QFX4000 doesn't run than those available on real board?

How many polys do u think i can move with softmod?Well in Maya I made a poly sphere primative and changed the divisions of it to quickly test poly counts. With no materials 75,000 is of course next to nothing and the viewport remains snappy. At 100,000 faces the viewport slowed slightly, but its still very responsive. At 160,000-1,500,000 faces the viewport is starting to get slugish, but still easily useable for modeling. Somewhere between the 1 million mark and 2.2million mark it dropped to a point where I wouldn't be able to animate the object without a proxy to hold its place.

My 8030 face RAH-66 model fully textured with a cockpit and translucent glass with one 512x512 map feels as light as a feather in the viewport even with high quality rendering in the viewport enabled. Huge step up from the softquadro4. :D

I haven't found anything else yet aside from the Maxtreme error in Max so far. Everything else seems dead on. To be fair the Maxtreme driver error could be any number of other things. I'll try differnent display driver versions to see if its the problem with Maxtreme.

Edit:

rakoon (http://www.cgtalk.com/member.php?u=32937), the procedure is really simple with RC15.3. Right now though its a beta though and in testing. I don't know how long until he'll release it for distrabution. All you have to do is install the strap driver check the unlock preofessional settings check box and tell it to force the id of the card as the quadro all in the strap driver tab. Unwinder makes it seem so easy. Once the machine reboots you can install a quadro driver as is without having to do any prep work on the driver.

My second picture shows what you want the strap driver to look like. Its that simple everything is on that one tab with no extra windows to deal with.

[OC-NightHawk]

I went into riva tuner and turned on enable overlays. Things like paint effects and paint skin weights work just as fast as the real quadro. Very nice. I remember trying to paint skin weights on my old GF4Ti4600 and laging seriously with this.

[rakoon]

I did tha same think for geforce2-> quadro2 ... so the procedure is right the same!
Thanks.

Cause my mother lenguage isn't english, let me tell u if i've understood right:
"My 8030 face RAH-66 model fully textured with a cockpit and translucent glass with one 512x512 map feels as light as a feather in the viewport even with high quality rendering in the viewport enabled. Huge step up from the softquadro4. :D"

So with SoftquadroFx performances are increased.

"I haven't found anything else yet aside from the Maxtreme error in Max so far. Everything else seems dead on. To be fair the Maxtreme driver error could be any number of other things. I'll try differnent display driver versions to see if its the problem with Maxtreme"

So u r asserting that max often crashes with maxtreme and everything else dosn't run despite of they do on real quadros

[OC-NightHawk]

I did tha same think for geforce2-> quadro2 ... so the procedure is right the same!
Thanks.

Cause my mother lenguage isn't english, let me tell u if i've understood right:
"My 8030 face RAH-66 model fully textured with a cockpit and translucent glass with one 512x512 map feels as light as a feather in the viewport even with high quality rendering in the viewport enabled. Huge step up from the softquadro4. :D"

So with SoftquadroFx performances are increased.

"I haven't found anything else yet aside from the Maxtreme error in Max so far. Everything else seems dead on. To be fair the Maxtreme driver error could be any number of other things. I'll try differnent display driver versions to see if its the problem with Maxtreme"

So u r asserting that max often crashes with maxtreme and everything else dosn't run despite of they do on real quadrosNo with Maxtreme selected for the driver of choice it gives me a maxscript error, allows me to set the settings, and then goes into an infinite loop and locks up. With OpenGL and Direct3D it works perfectly. Another tester though did have better luck with Maxtreme so it could just be my bad luck.

In Maya yes performance is very much increased. Especialy where hardware overlays are involved.

[DanSilverman]

Which just goes to prove some of my arguments in other threads that there is really no difference between a GeForce card and a Quadro ... so why spend 3x the price for a Quadro?

Now, I would suspect that there would be some slowdowns when using DirectX applications like 3D games and the like when using SoftQuadro. Is this correct? If so, is there a way to go back and forth? In other words, it would be great to get the card to work like a GeForce for games and a Quadro for MAX, etc.

[AlpineMan]

As I understand it, Maxstreme version 4.x works for Max 5.1, and Maxstreme 6.x works for Max 6.

Maxtrememe versions for Max7 have not been released, that I know from the Maxwebboards, unless in the last 36 hours someone pulled a fast one on me.

Nighthawk, could you post a screen grab of the maxscript error message you get when you run maxtreme? I'm really experienced with Maxscript, and would be interested in solving that puzzle.

I'm very interested in this new soft-quadro thingy. I just upgraded to a 6800 GT from an old Elsa Quadro DCC (Built on a gforce 3 core). It was a good card, and with maxstreme very fast, but it had 64 megs of ram. Very sucky. I expected this 6800 to be faster in Max, I was wrong. Granted I'm now pushing 2 moniters with one card, where as before I had a video card for each of my 2 monitors.

Chris J.

[rakoon]

AlpineMan,
i'm using a geforce2-MX softmodded to quadro2 MXR (64Mb). I thought too that 6800 would been better (causa much more mem and new advanced tech) but reading yout post i assume that it's not that great (for max). U said that i't's not faster than gef3...on what base u state that?

On the other hand, due to non to big budget, i'll opt for a 6800GT to softmod: softmod lets ur system to "see" the card as a quadro and then to use maxtreme drivers, that as u know, give u many improvements in work flow.

[DanSilverman]

I am using a GeForce 6800 Ultra with MAX and it is noticably faster than any of the previous versions of the GeForce cards.

[OC-NightHawk]

Now, I would suspect that there would be some slowdowns when using DirectX applications like 3D games and the like when using SoftQuadro. Is this correct? If so, is there a way to go back and forth? In other words, it would be great to get the card to work like a GeForce for games and a Quadro for MAX, etc.If there is its not major because I haven't noticed it. I was playing Men of Valor last night with smooth frame frate with all the details up at 1280x1024. The water in the game is something else. Anyways after I exited the game I turned on my second monitor and went to extend the desktop to it only to find out I had left it on while playing the game. :D So the graphics cards was really doing the two 1280x1024 displays at once. I know with my GF4Ti4600 that would have made the game start chugging big time.

__

AlpineMan, heres the error message. [I told you it was vague. :(]

http://studentpages.scad.edu/~ejackm20/SoftQuadroFX4000/SoftQuadroFX4000_03.png

I also went ahead and checked the config file before and after I set Maxtreme as the prefered driver. here's the section with OpenGL

GFXType=OpenGL
GFXRenderer=
GFXDevice=

Here is it with Maxtreme

GFXType=Custom
GFXRenderer=
GFXDevice=MAXtreme6.drv

[rendermania]

What are the benefits of softmodding to QF4000? Can you run quadro specific stuff like Gelato when you do it?

[SOPLAND]

What are the benefits of softmodding to QF4000? Can you run quadro specific stuff like Gelato when you do it? Gelato will run on any Geforce FX card and I'm sure earlier geforce cards as well. I've run Gelato with no problems on a 5900 and a 6800 GT. I think if their a specific driver feature Gelato needs and can't get from the hardware it just reverts to software/emulation. Quadros are the only hardware certified for Gelato.

[matty429]

Two Words: Bios Mod...

http://www.matttesch.net/images/screenshot.jpg

[Knotter8]

Knotter, i'm surprised that QFX1000 sucks with hi def textures...probably i was expecting more than it could really does.

Which other features a softmodded 6800@QFX4000 doesn't run than those available on real board?

How many polys do u think i can move with softmod?
The Qfx1000 is truly a nice card. The NV30 may have flopped as a gaming card, but on the 3D program side of biz it's great imo. Great performance in both Maya & Cinema4D. Yes, also with huge textures. But I sold the card to my buddy Warbird, he uses Max and he had some Maxtreme driver problems with it, so shaded mode performance was less than he expected. However with new drivers he resolved all problems.

I'm currently using a Gainward golden sample GT in Cinema4D and Maya 5 ; great. Remember, the Qfx1000 only has 128mb of DDR2 ram whereas the GT has 256mb of DDR3. The Qfx1000 processes all that through a 128bit bus while the GT has 256bit bus ; that explains alot. My GT's feels about twice as fast though, in a gouraud shaded animated Maya scene in viewport. On the other hand it feels strange than that the Hypershade takes twice as long to pop up. Must be the overlayplane difference then...

So, if ppl can get a Qfx1000 for 250 - 400 dollars it's imo a very good choice, if you don't care alot about high resolution & AA/AF in current PC games.

[OC-NightHawk]

Two Words: Bios Mod...
Thats perfectly good and all, but not everybody wants to flash the bios or cares about linux. :D Nice job though.

Knotter, moded as a quadro your card will pop the hypershader up quicker again. =)

[AlpineMan]

...
AlpineMan, heres the error message. [I told you it was vague. :(]

http://studentpages.scad.edu/~ejackm20/SoftQuadroFX4000/SoftQuadroFX4000_03.png

...
Okay, NightHawk. autonwmax.ms is sitting in your max scripts startup folder. Could you post it here so I can look at that script? The messagebox is telling you where the script is, so zip it up and post it here.
*edit*
Okay, Nighthawk, I searched google for autonwmax.ms and found out it's some script for Never Winter Nights? Well I would suggest for now, uninstalling those scripts from your Max6 folder and then try starting max.
But still send me the file if you would. I may be able to still make the script alittle more exception safe.

Thanks.
Chris J.

[OC-NightHawk]

Okay, NightHawk. autonwmax.ms is sitting in your max scripts startup folder. Could you post it here so I can look at that script? The messagebox is telling you where the script is, so zip it up and post it here.
*edit*
Okay, Nighthawk, I searched google for autonwmax.ms and found out it's some script for Never Winter Nights? Well I would suggest for now, uninstalling those scripts from your Max6 folder and then try starting max.
But still send me the file if you would. I may be able to still make the script alittle more exception safe.

Thanks.
Chris J.Well if I had to choose between the nwn exporter or maxtreme I say good bye nwn exporter. =) thanks.

Chris, you where right. I removed the startup script and Maxtreme works now. Thanks for the help. Its great to have Maxtreme back since I upgraded from my 4600. :applause:

[Hazdaz]

Interesting developments there guys - nice to see these hardware hacks working to take full advantage of a card you paid for.


KNOTTER - you mentioned the FX1000 card. I have that card and also run MAX7. If your friend is using 7 also, I would highly recommend he use D3D instead of OGL, my systems runs MUCH! faster with D3D (and hopefully when MAXtreme 7 comes out it will be even faster). HOWEVER, when runing MAX6, D3D was not the fastest. For 6, use MAXtreme and it will be quite a bit faster (however still not as fast as MAX7).


Also, I would be curious to hear what everones opinion would be on performance between a modded 6800 (faux FX4000) versus my FX1000? I am not looking to buy a new video card, but would be curious of the results. Also, I assume this software hack means nothing to a card that is already a Quadro, right? (Like it wouldn't make it even faster, would it?)

[OC-NightHawk]

Interesting developments there guys - nice to see these hardware hacks working to take full advantage of a card you paid for.


KNOTTER - you mentioned the FX1000 card. I have that card and also run MAX7. If your friend is using 7 also, I would highly recommend he use D3D instead of OGL, my systems runs MUCH! faster with D3D (and hopefully when MAXtreme 7 comes out it will be even faster). HOWEVER, when runing MAX6, D3D was not the fastest. For 6, use MAXtreme and it will be quite a bit faster (however still not as fast as MAX7).


Also, I would be curious to hear what everones opinion would be on performance between a modded 6800 (faux FX4000) versus my FX1000? I am not looking to buy a new video card, but would be curious of the results. Also, I assume this software hack means nothing to a card that is already a Quadro, right? (Like it wouldn't make it even faster, would it?)I'm not totally familar with the Quadro FX product line numbers, but if your card is the quadro varient of the 6800 or 6800LE you could possibly unlock the rest of your pipes. Softquadro though wouldn't hold much interest for you though if you have a quadro.

Edit: Do you know of any benchmarker geared towards cad you and I could run to contrast the two cards performance?

[matty429]

Interesting developments there guys - nice to see these hardware hacks working to take full advantage of a card you paid for.

Also, I would be curious to hear what everones opinion would be on performance between a modded 6800 (faux FX4000) versus my FX1000? I am not looking to buy a new video card, but would be curious of the results. Also, I assume this software hack means nothing to a card that is already a Quadro, right? (Like it wouldn't make it even faster, would it?)
Post some benches..And I'll try to match you

[OC-NightHawk]

Post some benches..And I'll try to match you
I have no doubt about that. You either have the same or better card so the same or better performance is expected. What set of benches do you want to run?

[Hazdaz]

MATTY & OC NIGHTHAWK - Ill post up a simple (but polygon heavy) scene... but its gonna be a MAX file, since I only run MAX (and CAD programs too, if you want to test those).

Concerning which chip the FX1000 based on - its based on the NV30GL chip.. I don't remember which 'consumer' Nvidia card is based on that same chip.

BTW, How do you turn on FPS display in MAX again? Since the upgrade to MAX7, I forgot how to turn it on.

[OC-NightHawk]

MATTY & OC NIGHTHAWK - Ill post up a simple (but polygon heavy) scene... but its gonna be a MAX file, since I only run MAX (and CAD programs too, if you want to test those).

Concerning which chip the FX1000 based on - its based on the NV30GL chip.. I don't remember which 'consumer' Nvidia card is based on that same chip.

BTW, How do you turn on FPS display in MAX again? Since the upgrade to MAX7, I forgot how to turn it on.
Sounds good. I can convert it to max6 in a few minutes if we're going to bench Maya too.

Off topic how do you like Max7 from Max6? Do you think it was worth the price of admission?

[matty429]

I don't have Max..I have maya 6 , and XSI essentials

I think the fx1000 variant is a 5600 ultra

here's what I got for Spec Maya

6800 GT OC Bios Modded to Quadro Fx 4000

A64 3200+


Overall Scores



GFX 3.81
I/O 2.74
CPU 2.16
Overall 3.29

[OC-NightHawk]

Is this what you used for specmaya? http://www.spec.org/ We could also do a bench with cinebench2003 http://www.maxon.de/pages/download/cinebench.html I don't have XSI. We can still have hazdez post the scene though, I'll convert it to a MayaAscii File and post it. Thing is filesize wise it needs to be small since I'm running low on webspace.

The specviewoperf is going to take a while for me to get downloaded, its ftp server is slow.

[updated]

[matty429]

I'm gettin poor numbers in cinebench

CINEBENCH 2003 v1
****************************************************

Tester : Matty429

Processor : A64 3200+
MHz : 2000
Number of CPUs : 1
Operating System : WinXP

Graphics Card : 6800 GT/modded Q4000
Resolution : 1280
Color Depth : 32

****************************************************

Rendering (Single CPU): 280 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): --- CB-CPU


Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 293 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 891 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 2114 CB-GFX

OpenGL Speedup: 7.22

****************************************************

[OC-NightHawk]

I don't know your score seems ok considering its a uni processor machine. Here's my cinebench results.

CINEBENCH 2003 v1
****************************************************

Tester : Erik

Processor : Dual Xeon Overclocked
MHz : 2930
Number of CPUs : 4
Operating System : XP Pro SP2

Graphics Card : GF6800NU/SoftQuadro FX 4000
Resolution : 1280x1024
Color Depth : 32

****************************************************

Rendering (Single CPU): 295 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 618 CB-CPU

Multiprocessor Speedup: 2.10

Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 303 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 1326 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 2249 CB-GFX

OpenGL Speedup: 7.43

****************************************************

[matty429]

There are guys with 9800 pros and 6800s getting in the 3000-4000+ range on the H/W openGl

I can't figure this one out...

All I know is my maya+linux numbers are through the roof....

[OC-NightHawk]

There are guys with 9800 pros and 6800s getting in the 3000-4000+ range on the H/W openGl

I can't figure this one out...

All I know is my maya+linux numbers are through the roof....
Yeah but what are the real quadros getting? I'll clean up my system and run it again to see if the numbers will go up higher.

[Hazdaz]

OK, here is a MAX7 scene (file size is way bigger than waht I expected - like 4.1MBs)
http://radiantcad.com/Stuff/Test/TEST-scene01.max

The scene 471K faces - It was twice that, but it ran too choppy, so I dropped it down to something that would run at a decent speed....

I set up a camara to follow a path to keep it more consistant. Just hit "C" to have the Camara be the viewport and hit PLAY. I still can;t find how to display the FPS in MAX, so until I find out how to do it again, I can't tell you how many FPS it is able to do. (i've been searching on a few sites, but no luck yet) If anyone knows, please let me know.

BTW, since this is not just video card related (also based on speed of the rest of the PC), I'm running a dual XEON 2.4 with 1GB set up.

[matty429]

Yeah but what are the real quadros getting? I'll clean up my system and run it again to see if the numbers will go up higher.
There's a guy with a quadro 3000 getting 3160 H/W open Gl

Imashinations cinebench page (http://www.3dfluff.com/mash/cbtop.php)


Hazdaz: I'd like to test you scene but I don't use max

[OC-NightHawk]

There's a guy with a quadro 3000 getting 3160 H/W open Gl

Imashinations cinebench page (http://www.3dfluff.com/mash/cbtop.php)


Hazdaz: I'd like to test you scene but I don't use maxI'll post it in Maya format and we can bench it in Maya. However I'm having problems opening the file it says I'm missing the reactor.dll and parameditor.gup files. I have Max6 so I'm wondering if your reactor dll is uncompaitable with the reactor that comes with version 6.:sad:

I can go to turbosquid and pick out a nice heavy model there thats free and give you the link.

here you go we can use this model in Maya. http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/205167/Action/FullPreview

[matty429]

OK, here is a MAX7 scene (file size is way bigger than waht I expected - like 4.1MBs)
http://radiantcad.com/Stuff/Test/TEST-scene01.max

The scene 471K faces - It was twice that, but it ran too choppy, so I dropped it down to something that would run at a decent speed....

I set up a camara to follow a path to keep it more consistant. Just hit "C" to have the Camara be the viewport and hit PLAY. I still can;t find how to display the FPS in MAX, so until I find out how to do it again, I can't tell you how many FPS it is able to do. (i've been searching on a few sites, but no luck yet) If anyone knows, please let me know.

BTW, since this is not just video card related (also based on speed of the rest of the PC), I'm running a dual XEON 2.4 with 1GB set up. I ran it in 3dsmax 7 Trial

4.02 fps

To turn on a frame rate counter
edit 3DSMAX.INI and under the "Performance" section add:
ShowFPS=1

It will show up under you frame slider in the middle

Here's a test for maya

3d Center (http://www.maya-testcenter.de/3doperinstr.html)


I get

178 wire
90 shaded
24 textured
24 textured and lit

theese are just average numbers based off of eyeballing the frame rate ui
I'll post these numbers for linux as well..

Linux Same machine

240 wire
95 shaded
36 textured
29 textured and lit

[Hazdaz]

I ran the CINEBENCH demo thing that you guys posts and got some VERY strange (and disappointing) results...
CINEBENCH 2003 v1
****************************************************

Tester :

Processor :
MHz :
Number of CPUs : 4
Operating System :

Graphics Card :
Resolution : <fill this out>
Color Depth : <fill this out>

****************************************************

Rendering (Single CPU): 230 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 462 CB-CPU

Multiprocessor Speedup: 2.01

Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 234 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 149 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 86 CB-GFX

OpenGL Speedup: 0.64

****************************************************

(the rendering numbers don't look too bad for a dual Xeon 2.4 (atleast I don't think too bad), but then look at the shading scores! They are WAY lower than what you guys got... whats up with that??

MATTY - thanks for the info there... I ran my mini MAX animation there and got 7.7 FPS

Oh, and about the file, there isn't anything special about it.. just a bunch of primitates and a few lights. You "should" be able to open (or maybe MERGE) it into MAX6.

[matty429]

I got 3549 OpenGl hardware in Cinebench using the 67.20 drivers...

[OC-NightHawk]

I ran the cinebench again

CINEBENCH 2003 v1
****************************************************
Tester : Erik

Processor : Dual Xeon Overclocked
MHz : 2930
Number of CPUs : 4
Operating System : XP Pro SP2

Graphics Card : GF6800NU/SoftQuadro FX 4000
Resolution : 1280x1024
Color Depth : 32

****************************************************
Rendering (Single CPU): 285 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 614 CB-CPU
Multiprocessor Speedup: 2.16
Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 294 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 1318 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 2864 CB-GFX
OpenGL Speedup: 9.75
****************************************************

Some things came out better others where close enough to the same that it could be margin of error. The OpenGL speed up though is a lot higher this time though. :thumbsup: However the overall score for OpenGL Hardware is still kind of low. When the defragging is done I'll run it again, I just didn't want to wait for the drive to finish defraging. =)

[Hazdaz]

I dont get this at all.. my software shading in that test (I am guessing that the first one is pure software) was faster (by ALOT) than either of the OPENGL ones. You guys are getting 2-3 thousand, and I'm getting less than 100!! WTF?

[matty429]

CINEBENCH 2003 v1
****************************************************

Tester : Matty429

Processor : A64 3200+
MHz : 2000
Number of CPUs : 1
Operating System : XP Pro

Graphics Card : 6800GT bios modded to Quadro 4000
Resolution : 1280x1024
Color Depth : 32

****************************************************

Rendering (Single CPU): 282 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): --- CB-CPU


Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 294 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 1535 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 3537 CB-GFX

OpenGL Speedup: 12.04

****************************************************

That seems about right....Using 67.20s

[matty429]

I dont get this at all.. my software shading in that test (I am guessing that the first one is pure software) was faster (by ALOT) than either of the OPENGL ones. You guys are getting 2-3 thousand, and I'm getting less than 100!! WTF?
What drivers are you using?

[Hazdaz]

I'll update them tommorrow, but right now I am running drivers from August 2004 (6.5.7.3) - which isn't that old. But thats totaly messed up... updated drivers aren't going to bump up those score by 50 times!!

What is weird is that my FPS score in MAX with that file I posted was about twice as fast as yours, and your PC is faster than mine (but mine is a dual processor).
I mean I would like to know whats up with that score, but more importnatly are the actualy programs that I run, and not some semi-synthetic benchmark.

[OC-NightHawk]

do you have any processes running in the background?

Edit: Matty, It's entirely possibly, infact very likely that your real time OpenGL is going to be faster. Your card is a GT mine is a NU. You've got twice the memory and better memory on the board coupled with a higher voltage for faster GPU clock speeds. While I do have my core up to 370MHz there is no way I'll be able to get the vanilla DDR memory to 1GHz+. If I'm lucky when the disk is done defraging and I run it again I will break the 3000 threshold but I don't think I'll get to 3500. However considering my card is $100 cheaper I can live with that.

[Hazdaz]

I was running a bunch of stuff, but the numbers I got I would have expected if I was rendering in the background (which I wasn't)...
Anyways, rebooted and had no extra thigns running except AVG anti-virus and got these numbers which are really no better than before :sad::

CINEBENCH 2003 v1
****************************************************

Tester :

Processor :
MHz :
Number of CPUs : 4
Operating System :

Graphics Card :
Resolution : <fill this out>
Color Depth : <fill this out>

****************************************************

Rendering (Single CPU): 237 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 493 CB-CPU

Multiprocessor Speedup: 2.08

Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 237 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 151 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 88 CB-GFX

OpenGL Speedup: 0.64

****************************************************

[matty429]

Somethings wrong with your system...try updating the drivers when you can..

[imashination]

Haz, those numbers show there is absolutely no openGL acceleration happening. What gfx card and drivers do you have? When you move windows around, do they stutter? do other 3d apps work?

Im just playing with my system right now

A64 3500 @2.6GHz
Geforce 6800GT @ 410/1100

Rendering it gets 360 for the single score and 3650 for the openGL

[Knotter8]

My tests :

Test with QuadroFX1000 (NV30) on Forceware 45.23
Tester : Knotter8
Processor : pentium 4 3,2C
MHz : 3360 or 3590 i don't remember exactly anymore
Number of CPUs : 2 (HT)
Operating System : win xp

Graphics Card : quadrofx1000
Resolution : 1024 x 768
Color Depth : 32

****************************************************

Rendering (Single CPU): 338 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 401 CB-CPU

Multiprocessor Speedup: 1.18

Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 349 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 1578 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 2826 CB-GFX

OpenGL Speedup: 8.11

Test with Geforce 6800GT (NV40) unmodded @ 400/1100 on Forceware 61.77 (yes, the oldies)
Tester : Knotter8
Processor : pentium 4 3,2C
MHz : 3360
Number of CPUs : 2 (HT)
Operating System : win xp

Graphics Card : geforce6800gt
Resolution : 1024 x 768
Color Depth : 32

****************************************************

Rendering (Single CPU): 338 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 399 CB-CPU

Multiprocessor Speedup: 1.18

Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 340 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 1548 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 3196 CB-GFX

OpenGL Speedup: 9.40

Hmm. Seems the GT beats the Qfx1000 at OGL HL hands down. The GT looks slightly more cpu mean though.....or it maybe it's becuz the test with the Quadro was when my WinXP was still very clean n fresh. The test with the GT is more recent ; slightly more cluttered up windows heheh.
Anyway, I don't regret getting the 6800GT over the QuadroFX3000. That card still costs about 1459 € over here, whereas my Gainward golden sample GT retails for about € 489.

I see you guys are getting some really nice scores (35XX-ish CB GFX) with those Quadro modded 6800GT's :eek: . Also, the difference with drivers is really obvious. Anyone have CB03 results on a GT on Forceware 67.03 ?

[AlpineMan]

Hey Nighthawk, glad to see it's now working for you now. That sounds very promising that your beta version works for you. In your first post your mentioned you couldn't give away the Software patch, but you said to keep an out in the next few weeks. Okay this may be a dumb question, but where do I keep an eye for? Do I keep an eye out at guru3d.com? Or do I need to contact someone personally? Thanks, I'd really like to try this softQuadro when it comes out.

Chris J.

[Hazdaz]

Haz, those numbers show there is absolutely no openGL acceleration happening. What gfx card and drivers do you have? When you move windows around, do they stutter? do other 3d apps work?

Im just playing with my system right now

A64 3500 @2.6GHz
Geforce 6800GT @ 410/1100

Rendering it gets 360 for the single score and 3650 for the openGL
I just updated the drivers this morning cuz this is now kinda pissing me off... anyways here are my new results... much better, but still kinda low compared to some of you guys that even have slower PCs. But atleast this time it looked like an actual animation (still shoppy with OGL), versus before it looked like a bad slide-show!

CINEBENCH 2003 v1
****************************************************

Tester Hazdaz

Processor 2.4 Ghz Xeon (dual)
MHz :
Number of CPUs : 4
Operating System : XP SP2

Graphics Card : FX1000
Resolution : Display 1 is 1280x1024, Display 2 is 1280x960
Color Depth : 32-bit

****************************************************

Rendering (Single CPU): 237 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 504 CB-CPU

Multiprocessor Speedup: 2.13

Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 238 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 906 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 1444 CB-GFX

OpenGL Speedup: 6.05

****************************************************

I also re-ran the MAX file I posted and it ran a little faster 8.2 FPS (runnign D3D).

In MAX OGL would always be super slow. I ran the test in OGL mode and managed only 2.3 FPS - however I didn't run it with the old drivers so I can't compare how much better the new drivers are.
Either way, OGL still seems quite slow.

Running it in Software mode, it ran 2.9 FPS, so my OGL is obviously screwed up and not working. WHY!

[Knotter8]

Hazdaz,

Somethings definately wrong with your Qfx1000's OGL performance.

When I still had it I scored 8.11 OGL and OGL HL 2826 with it on my measly P4 3,2

So, it might be your Forceware drivers afterall. I ran it on 45.23 Now I have a GT on 61.77 getting great scores as well. However I see guys scoring into 35XX CB's with 67.20. Beware though, I expierenced my pc doesn't like all 66.xx Forceware, although those did give me huge game boost. So I recommend 45.23 for your Qfx1000 or maybe try 67.03

You might wanna try to disable one of those monitors to see if that improves performance.
Maybe there's an error in dual monitor support in the drivers.

Also, make sure you use Cab Cleaner and Driver Cleaner 3.3 first to delete all old Forceware. You can dl them at www.guru3d.com (http://www.guru3d.com/)

[OC-NightHawk]

Just keep an eye out at www.guru3d.com (http://www.guru3d.com/) in the downloads section for RivaTuner 15.3.

Edit: My score from that bench is with my second monitor off.

[OC-NightHawk]

I rebooted to clear the cache, finished the defrag, and bumped my card speed up to 372/844 and got these results.

CINEBENCH 2003 v1
****************************************************
Tester : Erik
Processor : Dual Xeon
MHz : 2930
Number of CPUs : 4
Operating System : Windows XP Pro SP2
Graphics Card : 6800NU/SoftQuadro FX 4000
Resolution : 1280x1024
Color Depth : 32
****************************************************
Rendering (Single CPU): 293 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 620 CB-CPU
Multiprocessor Speedup: 2.12
Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 299 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 1356 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 2908 CB-GFX
OpenGL Speedup: 9.71
****************************************************

Better in everything compared to my other two attempts, however I still haven't made it to 3000. [well the single cpu render is small enough to be margin of error] Matty whats your GT/Bio moded Quadro clocks set to? One things for sure your memory even stock has got a lot over mine.

[matty429]

I didn't know you ran the max test in Direct3D ..I got 14.2

My clocks are set to the stock BFG GT OC speeds 370/1000

[OC-NightHawk]

Here's a screen shot from Max 6 with the f5e_05_max model I gave the link for earlier. I got on average 8-9fps rotating the view. This is with the maxtreme 6 driver and 1024x1024 for matierals in the view port and the rest of the settings turned all the way up.
http://studentpages.scad.edu/~ejackm20/SoftQuadroFX4000/SoftQuadroFX4000_04.png

Just for fun heres it rendered with MentalRay 640x480 default setttings except, samples min 16 max 64. Final Gather and gi are enabled with defualt settings. The only change I made to the scene is to put in a skylight. The render time was 1 min flat.
http://studentpages.scad.edu/~ejackm20/SoftQuadroFX4000/SoftQuadroFX4000_05.png
matty, so its pretty plain to see why the GT is worth the extra hundred dollars. The memory is just that much better. =) Maybe I'll sell my 6800NU and get a GT. I've sold off some other things that where sitting around and made enough money to pay the difference. Anybody want a 6800NU that can unlock all 16 pipes and overclock the GPU up to GT? The memory can make it 840MHz stable. This is with the stock bios. A bios mod to increase the voltage may yield some more speed. It's less then 3 weeks old. Do you think I'd get a good price at ebay?

[Hazdaz]

NIGHTHAWK - interesting that you posted that model... I loaded it up, turned on all the textures and using D3D I'm spinning it around at 66 FPS!; using OGL I was getting only between 9 -13 FPS. I also rendered it using the same settings as you mentioend and it took 1 min :18 seconds (which sounds right, since your XEONs are 3's and mine are 2.4's)

[OC-NightHawk]

NIGHTHAWK - interesting that you posted that model... I loaded it up, turned on all the textures and using D3D I'm spinning it around at 66 FPS!; using OGL I was getting only between 9 -13 FPS. I also rendered it using the same settings as you mentioend and it took 1 min :18 seconds (which sounds right, since your XEONs are 3's and mine are 2.4's)Yeah D3D is faster, but its been a while since I've used it. I'll have to check if D3D will aa the wireframes and do the textures sharp enough so I can see what I'm doing. Although it would be nice to take advantage of some of those shaders that D3D offers in the viewport. Do you notice a difference in image quality when working in OpenGL, Maxtreme, or D3D?

Oh, and my xeons are just ovedrclocked to 2930MHz 533FSB. Stock they are actually very lowly 2.4GHz 400MHz FSB C1 xeons. I bought them new a couple years ago $440 total and have enjoyed the same speed from them as if I had spent almost twice that per processor. :thumbsup:

[Hazdaz]

So you overclocked them, eh? Interesting.... I bought my whole system for $600 a couple of months ago (the FX1000 was purchased seperate a year ago for $500), and didn;t evne really think about OCing them, but maybe I should. I mean an extra 16 seconds for that rendering is nothing, but in an animation with hundreds or thousands of frames that can quickly add up.

And I have no issues with D3D at all, its much faster in MAX (most other apps prefer OGL). Ofcouse on my computer my OGL is sick slow, but even if it ran like it 'should' D3D is still faster. Also MAX7 is ALOT faster than MAX6, so that alone would speed you up. Texture quality-wise, I am looking at my screen right now, and I can't really pin-point any major difference in quality compared to your screen shot. I am seeing that your screen shot looks like the side of the jet is on shadow though.. on my screen it looks darker/shadowed on the other side, but thats probably nothing major.

[OC-NightHawk]

So you overclocked them, eh? Interesting.... I bought my whole system for $600 a couple of months ago (the FX1000 was purchased seperate a year ago for $500), and didn;t evne really think about OCing them, but maybe I should. I mean an extra 16 seconds for that rendering is nothing, but in an animation with hundreds or thousands of frames that can quickly add up.

And I have no issues with D3D at all, its much faster in MAX (most other apps prefer OGL). Ofcouse on my computer my OGL is sick slow, but even if it ran like it 'should' D3D is still faster. Also MAX7 is ALOT faster than MAX6, so that alone would speed you up. Texture quality-wise, I am looking at my screen right now, and I can't really pin-point any major difference in quality compared to your screen shot. I am seeing that your screen shot looks like the side of the jet is on shadow though.. on my screen it looks darker/shadowed on the other side, but thats probably nothing major.My thoughts exactly about overclocking so long as its stable. At 3.06Ghz my machine becomes unreliable so I just leave it at 2.93GHz. An extra 130Mhz isn't worth much if it means I can't render over night while I sleep. :D So the main reason to buy Max7 is viewport speed? Any new features, major bug fixes? Do you think its worth the money to upgrade from 6.1?

I was rotating the camera in the viewport snapshot to get an idea of the frame rate in the viewport. I probably just hadn't moved it back to its starting place. :D

[Hazdaz]

My thoughts exactly about overclocking so long as its stable. At 3.06Ghz my machine becomes unreliable so I just leave it at 2.93GHz. An extra 130Mhz isn't worth much if it means I can't render over night while I sleep. :D So the main reason to buy Max7 is viewport speed? Any new features, major bug fixes? Do you think its worth the money to upgrade from 6.1?
Lets put it THIS way... I can't remember the last time MAX7 crashed on me. I know I couldn't go a day (or sometimes an hour) with MAX6 not crashing on me before. So that alone makes it worth it, and then the viewport speed increase is the icing on the cake. About the new features, there aren't a ton (and honestly I haven't gotta to use many of them - one of these days I'll mess around with them) but some cool ones that become usefull. Overall, its turned into a much better upgrade than expected mostly because of stability/speed.

[MUzza]

You can also do a direct BIOS flash of a 6800GT to give a true quadro with no problems in Open GL/D3D.

You need to mod the BIOS to the GT clock speeds however you can use Quadro Drivers without NVStrap and patching. It makes the card alot faster, however it seems to only work on certain cards so a backup PCI graphics card and BIOS are needed in case anything goes wrong. I've seen this done (yet to buy my 6800GT) and it makes Maya alot faster and smoother than a softquadro.

[novadude]

Do you have any details on which cards do work, and which ones don't? (Basically, is it a brand/model problem, or individual card problem?)

[OC-NightHawk]

oYou see the whole however it seems to only work on certain cards so a backup PCI graphics card and BIOS are needed in case anything goes wrong. thats why I have not flashed my bios to increase the voltage. I don't have a PCI card any more and don't want to buy one. :)

However what softquadro are you refering to? Unless your one of the handful of people that Alexey Nicolaychuk gave a beta build to for testing, you don't have the softquadro for the Quadro FX 4000.

Based on the numbers I'm seeing compared to Matty I think the softquadro isn't affecting my speed, because he has 1GHz GDDR3 ram and all I have is overclocked DDR at 840MHz. Also his machine is a uni processor so its better at doing one task at one time. My machine is splitting resources of a physical processor to do multipul threads at once.

Granted I have two physical processors but that only comes in handy for a single task if the task is split into more threads. Unless the task at hand has multipul threads chances are it will slow down.

Considering that the render pipeline in Max's viewport is probably a fixed pipeline based on a single thread, its being forced to use a fraction of one of the processors. Top it off with the SMP overhead and its plain to see where the ~500 points in the viewport is going. I can live with that because at the end of the day thats not a big deal in the real world. However I gain render times at about six times what he can do. :)

The only benefit of flashing the bios is to be able to use it in Linux (nice but not a concern of mine), not having to reoverclock it if you reinstall windows, and being able to adjust low level settings like the voltage. Tchnically even the bios could be controlled with the strap driver too, but Alexey doesn't want to do that.

To recap, a bios flash is just as effective but a softmod is not slowed down. The very thought is laughable because its all still running through the graphics card hardware and driver. All the boot strap does is tell the os that the card is a quadro and force the pipes on in the driver. After you've loged in I doubt very much that the bootstrap does anything.

Edit:

Do you have any details on which cards do work, and which ones don't? (Basically, is it a brand/model problem, or individual card problem?)I'm running it on a PNY 6800NU 128MB. The softquadro should work on any GF 6 series card.

Edit Edit: I hope some people also realize that the only confirmed official Quadro FX 4000 has 12 pipes. Its possible the quadro FX 4000 bios disabled your last 4 pipes. You should probably use RivaTuner to be sure all 16 pipes are still on if not reenable them.

[novadude]

I was looking for an answer about the bios flash, but here is one for the soft quadro method.
What are the chances it will work with the PCI-E cards, and in SLI mode?

Also, matty429 could try to set his card to a slower speed to match those of your card OC-NightHawk. I'd also like to know if the bios disabled the last four pipes.

[matty429]

$ffffffffff NVIDIA specific display adapter information
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$0100000000 Graphics core : NV40 revision A1 (16x1,6vp)
$0100000001 Hardwired ID : 0045 (ROM strapped to 004e)
$0100000002 Memory bus : 256-bit
$0100000003 Memory type : DDR (RAM configuration 07)
$0100000004 Memory amount : 262144KB
$0100000005 Core clock : 371.250MHz
$0100000006 Memory clock : 501.188MHz (1002.375MHz effecti...
$0100000007 Reference clock : 27.000MHz
$010000000b HW masked units : none

I've had the pipes enabled since day 1

3484 HW/OpenGl Cinebench :Clock Speeds \372\484

[OC-NightHawk]

I was looking for an answer about the bios flash, but here is one for the soft quadro method.
What are the chances it will work with the PCI-E cards, and in SLI mode?

Also, matty429 could try to set his card to a slower speed to match those of your card OC-NightHawk. I'd also like to know if the bios disabled the last four pipes.I don't know if the bios would disable the pipes I just know the pny quadro fx 4000 has only 12 pipes. I just figured the bios would auto set the pipes to turn them off if you flashed a card with more pipes. However it is possible since Matty's didn't turn off maybe they hardware masked the quadro. Just thinking out loud, don't mind me. :)

I don't see why RT couldn't handle PCI-E, but I don't know if RT is programed for to detect and edit more then one device at a time. I'll ask him.

[matty429]

My Pipes turned off...I had to turn them back on...

I think the bios for AGP VS. PCI E are different..plus there is no quadro 4000 in PCI E
It would be a Quadro FX 4400

[Brettzies]

$0100000000 Graphics core : NV40 revision A1 (16x1,6vp)

My understanding of this, is that if your info reads like above, you have and can enable 16 pipes using RivaTuner, in the custom display thinga-ma-gig. Your drivers set them to use 12 I think. This doesn't show that yours are enabled, just that you have them available and can use the RivaTuner to transform your card. Mine reads (12x1, 4vp) or something like that. It never changes, even if I set them to 16 in the RivaTurner options. If there is another way to enable them, I am unaware of it. Maybe there is a bios way to switch it, but I'd rather just leave it. It's plenty fast for me right now.

[matty429]

nope....Mine used to say 12

[novadude]

matty, do you have a link to a guide for the bios flash? And did you use Dell's bios, or another one?

[matty429]

If you want to do it by yourself you need ,
This Site (http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=114699)
This Site (http://www.newbietech.net/eng/qtoq/nvidia/6800/6800mod.php)
Ignore the Hard Mod... It's not needed.
Riva tuner
A PCI card If you screw up..
Balls

[novadude]

Has anyone done this with an extracted PNY bios yet?

[Brettzies]

Hmm. I just downloaded the latest version of RivaTurner. Appears I can enable the hardware masked p/v pipes to get 16x1, but also says it may damage the hardware since they didn't pass quality test or something like that.

So, I guess it is possible, but I'm leary to try it as I fried up a GeForce5700XT and a GeForce 4400ti earlier this summer (bad ventilation, but still). Anyone try this yet where the hardware pipes were masked out and you forced enabling them by clicking the check box in RivaTurner?

[OC-NightHawk]

Hmm. I just downloaded the latest version of RivaTurner. Appears I can enable the hardware masked p/v pipes to get 16x1, but also says it may damage the hardware since they didn't pass quality test or something like that.

So, I guess it is possible, but I'm leary to try it as I fried up a GeForce5700XT and a GeForce 4400ti earlier this summer (bad ventilation, but still). Anyone try this yet where the hardware pipes were masked out and you forced enabling them by clicking the check box in RivaTurner?
It also says you can damage your card if you overclock it. The idea is that after you first enable the pipes you do a test like 3dmark and check for artifacts. If you have artifacts then your out of luck and should disable the pipes before they cause damage. If you don't have artifacts give a woot and enjoy. :)

However I don't know if this feature is meant for other cards aside from the GF 6 series. Maybe you should ask at www.guru3d.com (http://www.guru3d.com) in the rivatuner forum section. Here's hoping for you.

[Brettzies]

Cool. I'll try it later and post the results after 3dmark and maybe doom3 (before/after). I'm using an eVga 6800(nu).

[DanSilverman]

I modded my GeForce 6800 Ultra to a Quadro 4000 by flashing the BIOS and ... wow ... its nice :) (after installing the Quadro drivers from Nvidia).

[Knotter8]

I modded my GeForce 6800 Ultra to a Quadro 4000 by flashing the BIOS and ... wow ... its nice :) (after installing the Quadro drivers from Nvidia).
Could you please also do some game test then ? I guess the Quadro mod is gonna chop off some game performance...... the question is of course : how much ?

3DMark03 would be a nice indicator ..... I'm getting 12165 on my unmodded 6800GT on 61.77 Forceware @ 400/1100 right now....

[Hazdaz]

When you say the "QUADRO drivers", do you mean like the MAXtreme drivers specific to MAX, or the BETA ones that are listed under Quadro (which I THINK are not specific to any application). I am tempted to try the BETA ones, but rather not mess with my system unless its a big improvement.

[DanSilverman]

Hazdaz,


I just installed the latest official Quadro drivers from off the Nvidia web site. I did not install the MAXStream drivers. I might try them, though.

I did not do any "official" tests or benchmarks. All I know is I had a scene that was very sluggish in the shaded 3D view (looked like it moved at about 7 FPS). When I modded to the Quadro the same scene moves in real-time. So, I did get an OpenGL boost by flashing to the Quadro BIOS and installing the Nvidia Quadro drivers (v67.20).

[ceql]

This thread (and the ones over at guru3d.com, of course) has been really enlightening!
I've got some questions I've really like to get clarified though, before I splash out for my own 6800GT to play with! :D

1) Which brands of 6800GT's are most succesful? (does one need to look for a specific board design or anything?) It sounds like most people have been pretty successful, though :)
Just that, it seems that some of the older 'GF FX -> QuadroFX' softmods seemed to have a pretty random success ratio?

2) If the flashing isn't successful, would it be really safe and easy to just flash back?
(assuming I had a PCI video card, and made a copy of the original bios?)

3) Any reports of failed mods for this card? Also, Is there a chance of permenantly damaging the card?

4) hmm, How about the nvidia Gelato demo? Has anyone had any success with an un-modded 6800GT? (and if so, which brand?) Does it work after the Softmod too?

Thanks Very much, really great information so far!

[DanSilverman]

Frankly, I don't know a whole lot about this stuff. It is all new to me (other than the fact that I knew the GeForce cards were the same or about the same as the Quadro cards). Even so, I did some research on the net and read a lot of posts on forums. It seems that just about any GeForce 6800 card will work well, though I would recommend any of the Ultra cards. The main reason for this is that the GPU on the Ultra cards is faster without being overclocked. This means you can overclock to get much more (and keep things stable) than you could with a non-Ultra card. Also, the Ultras have 16 pipes instead of 12 for graphics, but I have seen that some of the non-Ultra cards can be modded to have 16 as well, but I don't know how well that actually works.

So, basically, I would say that just about any 6800 would do. I personally went with the ASUS because I think they make good products. But that's me.

If the flashing isn't successful, would it be really safe and easy to just flash back?
Yes. It is very simple. You first back up your original BIOS and then you can simply flash to the old BIOS should you ever need to. It is very simple.

3) Any reports of failed mods for this card? Also, Is there a chance of permenantly damaging the card?
I would suppose there are failures or else there wouldn't be any warnings ;) . Any time you flash a BIOS you run a risk. So, if you are not willing (or able) to take the risk, then I would recommend that you don't do it. On the other hand, flashing my 6800's BIOS was a piece of cake and I am very happy with the result. My 6800 reads as a Quadro and MAX is running much better in OpenGL mode. I was moving a sphere with Mesh Smooth set to 5 iterations (over 1 million polys) in shaded view with wireframe overlay and, while it was not perfectly smooth, I could work at that speed. Before modding the card I could only get up to about 250,000 - 300,000 before the viewport was choked. Not only that, but I seem to have lost no performance in DirectX games like Half Life2.

[ceql]

Wow, thanks for the info, Dan! :applause:

Ok!! I think I'm gonna go and try to find a good local place to get a 6800 then! */me drools at the prospect of 1 Million polys!* , and then I'll check out and see if I can get any mileage out of Gelato :)

[MUzza]

You see the whole thats why I have not flashed my bios to increase the voltage. I don't have a PCI card any more and don't want to buy one. :)

However what softquadro are you refering to? Unless your one of the handful of people that Alexey Nicolaychuk gave a beta build to for testing, you don't have the softquadro for the Quadro FX 4000.
You don't need to softmod the card anmore so you don't actually need the Softquadro patch. If you read GURU3D correctly, you'll find that more and more users are having successful bios flashes to a Quadro4000. I also never said i had softquadro.


The only benefit of flashing the bios is to be able to use it in Linux (nice but not a concern of mine), not having to reoverclock it if you reinstall windows, and being able to adjust low level settings like the voltage. Tchnically even the dios could be controlled with the strap driver too, but Alexey doesn't want to do that.

To recap, a bios flash is just as effective but a softmod is not slowed down. The very thought is laughable because its all still running through the graphics card hardware and driver. All the boot strap does is tell the os that the card is a quadro and force the pipes on in the driver. After you've loged in I doubt very much that the bootstrap does anything.

Erm the benefits of flashing a bios is that you automatically get a quadro card if you have to format. You don't need to run a half dozen programs etc in order to install drivers, maxtreme etc. A bios Flash is more effective than a softmod.

Yes the bootstrap tells the card what it is with a softmod. As soon as you flash the bios the graphics card autodetects itself as a Quadro 4000 not a geforce 6800. A Bios flash to a quadro also opens up all the pipes on the card.

[OC-NightHawk]

You don't need to softmod the card anmore so you don't actually need the Softquadro patch. If you read GURU3D correctly, you'll find that more and more users are having successful bios flashes to a Quadro4000. I also never said i had softquadro.

Erm the benefits of flashing a bios is that you automatically get a quadro card if you have to format. You don't need to run a half dozen programs etc in order to install drivers, maxtreme etc. A bios Flash is more effective than a softmod.

Yes the bootstrap tells the card what it is with a softmod. As soon as you flash the bios the graphics card autodetects itself as a Quadro 4000 not a geforce 6800. A Bios flash to a quadro also opens up all the pipes on the card.Great so we are in agreement, because you just rephrased everything I said. That still doesn't change the fact that some people can't or won't flash the bios. Great if you do, great if you don't its just two different means to an end.

IMO softmod is safer if you don't have a PCI card and don't want to full out void your warranty. How are you going to explain to the card manufacture why a quadro bios is on it if it breaks and could have been under warranty? That’s my only [typo fixed] argument against it. I'm not trying to pick a fight or anything but I'm trying to say that flashing a bios is risky.

One last thing the boot strap does not suck up any resources while windows is running. It only comes into play at boot up before you even get to the os. RT doesn't need to run while windows is running to make it think it’s a quadro. Saying you need programs running for the softmod is like me telling you that the bios flasher has to be running while you’re using it. Try not to contort the facts. [edit: flashing the bios does not give you 16 pipes 100%. If you can't softmod the card to get the pipes without artifacts enabeling through the bios isn't going to make them any better. Unless of course you up the voltage. Even then you take the risk of frying the gpu.]

Let’s just agree that the GeForce does well as a quadro regardless of how it’s done and not argue semantics ok.:thumbsup:

Edit:

Here's a view of the maya viewport with high quality enabled running 25fps. The GeForce as a Quadro does a good job. However does anybody know how to make maya use aa for the wireframes like Max?

http://studentpages.scad.edu/~ejackm20/SoftQuadroFX4000/SoftQuadroFX4000_06.png

Edit Edit never mind I found how to aa the edges. It was right in front of me the whole time. :)

[AlpineMan]

Nighthawk:

Let me ask a few stupid questions, cause I've never modded a card before:

1. I've seen the RivaTuner 15.2 + scripts at Guru3d.com. Am I to understand RT 15.2 is for the 5000 series of Geforce cards?

2. You've mentioned Rivatuner 15.3 for softModing the Geforce 6800 cards? And I understand your using a beta 15.3 version that you can't distribute yet?

I think I'm going to have to spend more time at guru3d.

Chris J.

[OC-NightHawk]

Nighthawk:

Let me ask a few stupid questions, cause I've never modded a card before:

1. I've seen the RivaTuner 15.2 + scripts at Guru3d.com. Am I to understand RT 15.2 is for the 5000 series of Geforce cards?

2. You've mentioned Rivatuner 15.3 for softModing the Geforce 6800 cards? And I understand your using a beta 15.3 version that you can't distribute yet?

I think I'm going to have to spend more time at guru3d.

Chris J.I skipped the 5000 series cards so I couldn't tell you. I've heard you can use the softquadro4 on them, but if thats true your stuck with some really old drivers. I'm sure Unwinder would know. Heres a few topics a quick search at guru3d brought up.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=91686&highlight=softmod+Geforce+5900
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=115943&highlight=softmod+Geforce+5900
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=72188&highlight=softmod+Geforce+5900

So people have had sucess softquadroing the 5000 series cards with 15.2 so you should be able to as well. :D

15.3 adds the feature to be able to softmod a Quadro 6 series. It might be possible for it to softquadro older cards too and use the newer drivers, but I don't have a older card to test. He selected testers to specificly test the 6 series cards.

I wish I could share the Beta build I really do. But the only rule in the NDA is that I can't do just that. I'm sorry.

Best of luck

[MUzza]

One last thing the boot strap does not suck up any resources while windows is running. It only comes into play at boot up before you even get to the os. RT doesn't need to run while windows is running to make it think it’s a quadro. Saying you need programs running for the softmod is like me telling you that the bios flasher has to be running while you’re using it. Try not to contort the facts. [edit: flashing the bios does not give you 16 pipes 100%. If you can't softmod the card to get the pipes without artifacts enabeling through the bios isn't going to make them any better. Unless of course you up the voltage. Even then you take the risk of frying the gpu.]

I didn't say Rt needs to run while you've softmodded your card. You need to run RT to softmod your card, then install drivers. With a BIOS flash you have a PURE quadro card. Also if you have a secondary graphics card you can restore your original BIOS so warranty isn't void.

Having tried a softmod and a BIOS flash tonight i have to say the BIOS flash is faster by about 5% than the softmod. Might be a hardware/software thing, but it is faster. It's also faster in specview but 3/4 but don't have results on this PC to post (still not got my 6800 damnit!)

[OC-NightHawk]

Muzza don't even try to pretend you know more then me about how to softmod the card with RT 15.3. Have you done it, had access to it. No and no. Unless one of the few people that Unwinder provided the beta of 15.3 broke their NDA agreement and gave you a copy you haven't tried squat. So stop making stuff up when you don't know the answers. The only thing That RT 15.3 does is install the bootstrap, tell the strap enable the pipes enable the professional features and have the card report to windows its a quadro. Thats it after that RT 15.3 is done. From there you take a stock nvidia driver and install it, reboot and enjoy.

The limitations of the softmod is that its windows only and you can't delete some of the rt files from the hard drive. However whats a few mb on the hard drive in this day and age? I've got gigs and gigs free on several drives. A few MBs is nothing. It would be great if RT could be ported to linux, but for now the bios mod is the only option for linux. I respect you for being willing to flash your cards bios, but i will call a admin/mod over to get this topic back on track if you insist on carrying on in this direction. If you want to post results of your moded geforce into a quadro's performance great. List its brand and specs and post your resluts. But don't sit here and argue over and over about which which method is better, especially when you haven't even had the chance to try out RT 15.3 and know whats going on first hand.

Once and for all here you go here's a screen shot showing my card as a Quadro and the taskmanager. Notice there is no softmod bootstrap or rt running. Please let this be the end of this ok. Lets get back on topic about GeForce performance as a Quadro. Before you ask no wrapper.exe is not the bootstrap.

http://studentpages.scad.edu/~ejackm20/SoftQuadroFX4000/SoftQuadroFX4000_07.png

[MUzza]

Once and for all here you go here's a screen shot showing my card as a Quadro and the taskmanager. Notice there is no softmod bootstrap or rt running. Please let this be the end of this ok. Lets get back on topic about GeForce performance as a Quadro. Before you ask no wrapper.exe is not the bootstrap.

Erm you just read what you want to don't you. I HAVE NOT ONCE SAID YOU NEED TO HAVE RT RUNNING TO MAKE A SOFTMOD WORK ONCE YOU HAVE SOFTQUADRO'D. There i made it in upper case just to make sure you read it.

Oh and as for knowing more about 15.3 RT how do you know i don't have it? What you have access to my PC? I've softmodded since geforce 3, presently on a 5900 hardmodded to quadro.

I know what wrapper.exe is, (hey BSc Hons Information Systems and Programming and BSc Hons Interactive Entertainment) But like i've previously said you only read what you want to read and interpret the same. I dunno maybe it's my use of English and that it doesn't contain any americanism, who knows.

Edit: Infact i have a Gefore ti4200 running on 53.03 drivers Softquadro'd something that RT doesn't recommend and unwinder says is unlikely.

http://www.imagehop.com/show.php?id=4632f9957452b&n=quadro53.jpg

[OC-NightHawk]

Muzza, enough you are off topic.
________

Gelato renders really fast! The GeForce as a quadro appears to do it without problem in Maya 6. I'll have to give that a try on a actual scene with proper lighting not just a model resource. I don't know how much is the commercial version, but it's probably super expensive.:D
http://studentpages.scad.edu/~ejackm20/SoftQuadroFX4000/SoftQuadroFX4000_08.png

[MUzza]

Muzza, enough you are off topic.

Please explain how. I made a post relevant to the topic, you tried to counter that. I rebuked, then you did. Then you made false accusations about my posts. I then proved your entire arguement wrong. Yet in all those posts the Topic was never left, it veered to a different course about softmodding. But it never left the initial topic of FX40000. Maybe it's your way of trying to get out of your comments.

Oh and FYI, Unwinder asked me to test RT 15.3, i had to refuse since i don't have a 6x00 card presently, due to an inept delivery service.

[Hazdaz]

umm... so, yea.

So, NIGHTHAWK, I don't really see whats so special about that helocopter pic. I mean there aren't any amazing textures or even shadows or anything of that nature. Gelato is some kind of real-time rendering solution thingy, but even MAX could render that image in the viewports in real time. What am I missing?
<-- confused.

[OC-NightHawk]

umm... so, yea.

So, NIGHTHAWK, I don't really see whats so special about that helocopter pic. I mean there aren't any amazing textures or even shadows or anything of that nature. Gelato is some kind of real-time rendering solution thingy, but even MAX could render that image in the viewports in real time. What am I missing?
<-- confused.Nothing about the model just that nVidia's Gelato renderer works with the GeForce card running as a Quadro. Some people else where had asked me to test Gelato. I figured I'd post the render here too to show it works in case anybody was interested to know if Gelato works. It's like a better version of Maya's hardware renderer.

Oh, just so everyone knows the release is expected around the end of this month.:thumbsup:

[Hazdaz]

You have any good links on Gelato? - I would like to learn more about it (was interested in it since it was first announced). Ofcourse thats assuming it works in MAX, cuz that the only DCC app that I use. And I assume its not an actual "shipping" yet, right?

[OC-NightHawk]

You have any good links on Gelato? - I would like to learn more about it (was interested in it since it was first announced). Ofcourse thats assuming it works in MAX, cuz that the only DCC app that I use. And I assume its not an actual "shipping" yet, right?From nVidia's faq.http://film.nvidia.com/page/faq.html#q15

"What about other DCC applications, like 3ds max or Softimage?
One developer has already created a 3ds max plug-in for Gelato that should be available soon. When it is, we'll have information available on this site. For our part, NVIDIA will focus its efforts on improving the Mango plug-in for Maya and and will not be creating plug-ins for other modeling and animation applications, but we encourage third party developers. To assist others in developing tools and plug-ins for Gelato, we have created a developer program. Details are at http://film.nvidia.com/page/gelato_developers.html."

So I guess not yet. I'm in the same boat as you. I'm more interested in the Max rendering. However the door is open for another company to compete with nVidia in this market and support more packages. :D *hint hint professional programmers*

You can download the demo here, but its maya only. http://film.nvidia.com/page/gelato_download.html

Will Gelato run on a system with an NVIDIA Geforce® GPU?
Quadro is NVIDIA's professional line of GPUs and Gelato, a product for 3D graphics professionals, was designed to be run on these. Geforce is intended for consumers and home use. We have done nothing to deliberately disable Gelato on the Geforce, but we do not test or certify Gelato on that plat-form, nor will we work to ensure that future versions of Gelato are compatible with Geforce cards. We cannot guarantee Gelato's performance on Geforce and we do not provide support for the software on that platform.

Sounds like it might work on the newer GeForce GPUs too.

[DanSilverman]

Not that this matters a hill of beans, but I am curious. When you boot your system and you see the initial screen (the one where you can press DEL to enter and modify your MB's BIOS), what does it list your video card as if you have softmodded it? Does it still tell you you are running a GeForce 6800? I know if you flash the Bios it now reads as a Quadro here even before booting into Windows. Once again, it doesn't matter at all, but I am curious.

[matty429]

NO it says something like NV40Gl 7548 ...something like that

[OC-NightHawk]

Not that this matters a hill of beans, but I am curious. When you boot your system and you see the initial screen (the one where you can press DEL to enter and modify your MB's BIOS), what does it list your video card as if you have softmodded it? Does it still tell you you are running a GeForce 6800? I know if you flash the Bios it now reads as a Quadro here even before booting into Windows. Once again, it doesn't matter at all, but I am curious.The boot strap kicks in some time after the bios info is displayed and before windows starts. You still see the Geforce info at the very start when the machine first turns on. Whats displayed on boot is just the info in the bios. Matty maybe Dan used a different bios?

[DanSilverman]

I actually modified the bios via Omni Edit Extreme. It still reads a bit funny during booting, but it does not say the typcial "GeForce 6800" like it used to.

[DanSilverman]

One thing that is important for those that choose to go the route of flashing their BIOS instead of using the softmod: you will need to edit the actual BIOS you use or you will not get all the speed out of your card that you should. The Quadro FX 4000 card uses a 350 MHz GPU and the RAM is set to something like 1 GHz. Many GeForce 6800 Ultra cards have 400 MHz (or faster) GPUs with the RAM at 1.1 GHz (with neither GPU or RAM overclocked). The DELL BIOS (and others) for the Quadro card has the GPU clocked at 350 and the RAM at 1 GHz. So you would actually be slowing down your card quite a bit. You would need to use a program like Omni Extreme to edit the BIOS to the proper GPU and RAM speeds in order to get the performance you should be getting for your card. You can overclock the card this way as well, but this can produce undesired results and can even damage the card (depending on the settings you choose).

[loop29]

The bios information loading screen is the same like the name that is diplayed in the advanced properties tab for display in windows, it´s only a charcter string. You can edit this one via some bios editor or with a hex editor. What is a mystery to me is that some people reporting good benchmarks with specviewperformance benchmarks but in application benchmarks like SpecAPC for Maya the cards with the modified bioses seem to lag with marginal gaps to the real Quadro FX 4000. If you guys can run some application benchmarks it would be of great interest for people in here and on the guru3d forums. I kinda doubt that this is possible, that nvidia somehow enabled prof. OGL features under specview and throttles the card down in real applications, but the statement stands. If someone get´s a look on the core pls post what it is written on the chip, I assume it will be something like Geforce 6800 or NV40.

regards

[DanSilverman]

I am very new to apps that bench applications like 3D Studio MAX. Can you tell me which apps to use and I will download them and gladly post my results?

[loop29]

Here you go:

http://www.spec.org/gpc/apc.static/max6info.html

[stephen2002]

Gelato seems to run on my GeForce 6800 GT without any tweaks. So nothing speical from SoftQuadroing it. It is really slow though, a simple scene with 4 cubes and a plane takes about 30 seconds to render, through the Maya interface. Based on GPU temperature it isn't using it at all. The Maya shader support is pretty sad too, simple things like bump maps were not carried over. It is quite possible that it is crippled by the fact that I have a GeForce even though it runs.

[DanSilverman]

Here you go:

http://www.spec.org/gpc/apc.static/max6info.html
Ouch! A slow download of over 400 MB! Well, don't expect benchmarking results until sometime tomorrow :) .

[DanSilverman]

Oops! The Benchmarking utility is not only over 500 MB, but it states it is for MAX 6. I am running MAX 5.1. Is there a utilty for MAX 5.1?

[loop29]

Gelato seems to run on my GeForce 6800 GT without any tweaks. So nothing speical from SoftQuadroing it. It is really slow though, a simple scene with 4 cubes and a plane takes about 30 seconds to render, through the Maya interface. Based on GPU temperature it isn't using it at all. The Maya shader support is pretty sad too, simple things like bump maps were not carried over. It is quite possible that it is crippled by the fact that I have a GeForce even though it runs.
It could be that it returns to software rendering and doesn´t use the GPU for rendering. Gelato is a mystery to me at all, it would be nice if nvidia clarify things up on hardware requirements for gelato or mango ...

Dan, if it takes too long don´t download the benchmark, I´m sure that there will be enough people which will benchmark with applications.

regards

[stephen2002]

It could be that it returns to software rendering and doesn´t use the GPU for rendering. Gelato is a mystery to me at all, it would be nice if nvidia clarify things up on hardware requirements for gelato or mango ...
It could also be that I am just doing something wrong. The sample scenes render pretty quick, but again with essentially no rise in GPU temperature. Under the requirements it says that you need an FX class graphics card to run it on, so I was under the impression that some things it needs the GPU to do.

Either way the integration between Maya and the Gelato render is certaintly not seamless. While there is a render globals box to play in settings cary accross unpredictably.

[DanSilverman]

loop29,

It is not the lengh of time. I have a decent ADLS line. The main problem is that the benchmark is only for MAX 6. I use MAX 5.1. Is there a MAX 5.1 version? I did not see one.

[OC-NightHawk]

Gelato seems to run on my GeForce 6800 GT without any tweaks. So nothing speical from SoftQuadroing it. It is really slow though, a simple scene with 4 cubes and a plane takes about 30 seconds to render, through the Maya interface. Based on GPU temperature it isn't using it at all. The Maya shader support is pretty sad too, simple things like bump maps were not carried over. It is quite possible that it is crippled by the fact that I have a GeForce even though it runs.? So all the quadro features do is speed Gelato up? The image I showed you took literaly no time at all. The render wasn't fast enough to be real time but it was damn close; ~1fps. I didn't look into what features it supports, but yeah tested a scene with bumps and it didn't render them. That sucks, even Maya's high quality mode in the viewport does bumps. I'll have to check if it needs specific materials like renderman does, I just can't see it being this basic.

In Maya the GeForce running as a Qudro enjoys a faster hypseshade window in Maya among other things like paint skin weights.

I'll run specview later, that thing is taking for ever. How many tests does that thing have to run anyways?:banghead:

Edit: I've got a phone interview in a few minutes. Wish me luck. :thumbsup:

[Brettzies]

In Maya the GeForce running as a Qudro enjoys a faster hypseshade window in Maya among other things like paint skin weights.

Another great thing about using a Quadro is the red timeline bar in the graph editor for Maya. Very important for animation. On a geForce, it's grey and frequently blends in with the grid lines of the graph editor...very annoying, so you have to tweak your bg color a bit to find a sweet spot.

BTW, I enabled my 4 extra pipelines using the bypass Hardware Mask option in RivaTuner. Doom3 got about 1 more fps, and 3dMark03 got about 800 more "3d marks." Not really significant, but I think my cpu is probably the bottle neck(AMD 2400+). I am not running softQuadro or the Quadro specific drivers. If I didnt' love playing games so much I would switch :) Maybe later I'll try it. Anyway, it works.

[DanSilverman]

Well, I flashed the BIOS of my video card and I ended up with increased speed in OpenGL such as when I run MAX, but I noticed no slowdowns in any RT3D games like HL2. So, I feel like I got the best of both worlds.

[j9k_80]

maybe a stupid question, but will this work on the new 6800 go? I think the fastest bestest mobile quadro card is still a generation behind the 6800, so I don't know which quadro version would correspond, or if I would just install desktop quadro drivers.

Also, due to battery performance, i imagine the other 4 pipes just don't exist on the 6800 go, will that effect its ability to softmod into a correct quadro version?

[OC-NightHawk]

maybe a stupid question, but will this work on the new 6800 go? I think the fastest bestest mobile quadro card is still a generation behind the 6800, so I don't know which quadro version would correspond, or if I would just install desktop quadro drivers.

Also, due to battery performance, i imagine the other 4 pipes just don't exist on the 6800 go, will that effect its ability to softmod into a correct quadro version?
So it has 12 pipes? The real Quadro FX 4000 only has 12 pipes. It might be possible.

[rakoon]

Dan, could u post the 6800' bios flashing steps u followed, please?

[OC-NightHawk]

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=114957

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=114000

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=114699

[gnz]

I tried the bios mod and it's working really saweet for me. My wireframe ports are now smoothed and much faster.

Instead of running any benchmarks Im comparing the viewport performance of the two 3d apps I use: Rhino and XSI before and after patching. I would say Im getting about 50-70% more in wireframe view plus the smoothing!! :thumbsup:

Also tried the games far cry and doom3, they both run very smooth just as without the patch.

cheers
Gnz

[OC-NightHawk]

Yeah the whole quadro card is getting to be quite the gimmik isn't it. :D For the benifits of everybody, which of the methods did you use to modify your bios?

[gnz]

For the benifits of everybody, which of the methods did you use to modify your bios?I followed the instructions posted by tessellate (http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?threadid=114699&perpage=10&pagenumber=3).

The card I bought for this procedure is a Leadtek Winfast GeForce 6800GT 256Mb (http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=14-122-195&depa=0). It's original clock rates matched those in the bios so I didnt need to change anything with the Omni editor.
After the flashing I just used rivatuner and the nvstrap driver to put the 16x1, 6vp back.

After three days of heavy use, there are still no serious issues. Just a small annoying one with Rhino and smoothed wireframe, but seems to be app's fault.

It feels just awesome to turn a $400 card into a $2,000+ one. :buttrock:

cheers,
Gnz

[OC-NightHawk]

Only a few days before RC15.3 is released to everybody. =)
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=118695

[ceql]

Wow, good news indeed!

I've decided not to risk bios flashing my card at all, after experiencing the horror dealing with the WORST retailer that I (and many others) have dealth with and the prospect of losing my money on a 6800GT that was faulty out-of-the-box has already been too much! (Though, when I opened the box, the card had obvious signs of being repackaged - for instance, an old and crinkled anti-static bag with worn sticky tape on it??)

[commence long, but mildy interesting retailer horror story]

The retailer I bought it from, as I eventually learnt, had a fairly notorious reputation - LOTS of people returning faulty/stock with missing parts/ not receiving the hardware they paid for , and LOTS of bad feedback/strange stories about that place. Unfortunately, I only found out after making the mistake from shopping there first (The card costs ~$700 AUD btw). When I bought it back, the manager took it back promptly, and told me he'd get me a replacement. (I didn't think too much of it at the time, but he took it back really quickly, without really checking anything... did he indeed know that the card was a dud from the beginning, given the obviously used condition of the packaging? anyway, who knows! )

A week later, I still had heard nothing - the manager/owner there dodgeded all my phonecalls (Most the time you just get a machine if you ring. You can forget about him returning calls.) and didn't respond to any MSN/ICQ messages that he didn't want to answer (heh, anything mentioning either a date or refund will get no responce. If you asked something simple and vague like, "please give me a call when it comes in", etc. you'd get an "ok", but that's it.). One customer that was in the store had left 10 messages on their answering machine over the course of a week with no answer. He bought all the parts for a new system from them, BUT he got given the wrong type of HD, and a DVD-ROM instead of the +- dual-layer DVD-Burner, and a week after paying, he had still not gotten a Motherboard (ANY Motherboard!) from them (This is AFTER waiting 3 weeks for the order).

Anyway, to keep this forum proffessional, and free of any potential legal trouble, I won't mention the name of this particular retailer, but PM me if you'd like to know, or if you're in Australia and you're thinking of purchasing parts within the Brisbane CBD. For your own sake, based on my own experience, my friends' experiences, customers who I've talked to there, and various horror stories I've read from Australian forums, I can only recommend that you beware before buying from this particular retailer. They have an online store too, and let me say this: NEVER BUY FROM SITES THAT OMMITS TELEPHONE OR ADDRESSES DETAILS. (I'm glad I didn't buy from them online, but if I didn't live within travelling distance, it may have been impossible to deal with this one directly)

I've bought tons of stuff from many computer shops, but this one had me on edge. If it were just my experince, then I would have just passed it off as me being unlucky. But, when I found out what so many other people had been saying about them, I started to worry! Anyway, this experience has definetely changed how I choose computer retailers in future... and I'm glad that I didn't buy a new system from them! :) Next time, I'm gonna ask around my more computer-savvy friends first and then try to google the name to check if there's been any considerable number of bad feedback.

Sorry, I know that some retailers have it tough, and of course some of their problems may be due to their suppliers, etc. Certainly, they can't be blaimed for the fact that the card was faulty if that's how they received it themselves, and I don't wish them any ill-will. But, the customer service from the store had been extremely poor and unproffessional (The manager seemed to be avoiding all customer queries), and what saddens me is the amount of customers who've had with similar, or even much worse experiences with that retailer.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, My issue was only resolved when I had to travel all the way up there (1 hour trip for me) and deal with them in person, AND got lucky that they just happened to have received a 6800GT (albeit from a different vendor) the afternoon before!. The few hours I was there, other customers came in to complain about missing/wrong parts (I've never seen so many similar issues like this at a single store!). That day, the manager was away due to some personal issues (resolving car accident from the night before apperantly?). But I was served by two very NEW [read: 4th shift] staff members, who were actually VERY helpful and could sympathise with me. Now, this card they had received yesterday, it came from their supplier with no box (Well, not the correct packaging anyway - it was in a taped up FX5200 box), no CD's, or cables but I asked 'em to test the card instore this time, and it worked, and I settled for that! :)

Sorry for going OT, I had to vent :)

[/end story]

Right now, my new card is running rock solid within Maya without any mods, tweeks, etc. But, I'm very anxious to test out the new Rivaturner, thanks for the news!

[gaspedalo]

I will get a new PCI-E system shortly. Have there be any attempts of flashmodding the bios of a pci-e 6800gt to a quadrofx 4400 ? And wich 6800gt do you recommend for modding?
Cheers,
Daniel

[trex4d]

The new RivaTuner is out!!;)
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=163
:bounce:

[AlpineMan]

Well, I just installed the newly released Rivatuner 15.3 today. It looks like unwinder released it a day early.

I enabled the NVStrap stuff, choose Quadro from the the drop downlist, rebooted, and presto, It shows I have a Quadro4000.

I ran a Max benchmark, provided by a guy on the Max webboards.

My wireframe went from 85 seconds to 46 seconds, using maxtreme.
My shaded went from 140 seconds to 95 seconds, using maxtreme.

So needless to say this is my late Christmas present!!!

Chris J.

P.S.
Thanks to unwinder for doing this, and to Nighthawk for getting me interested in this in the first place.

[ceql]

Hooray! It's working for me too! :bounce:
Wow, unWinder just rocks! :applause: :applause:

The performance within Maya is still fairly similar (as peole reported), but I've yet to checkout gelato! :)

/me very excited!


Edit: After some playing around, one difference I've noticed within Maya is that the DrawSplit plugin seems to be ALOT more stable after the softMod. My un-softquadroed 6800GT on the 71.20 drivers seemed to make drawsplit crash Maya sometimes (and also, it didn't draw the line properly sometimes), whereas it worked better on my card before that one. Now, softmodded (on 67.22) , everything is stable again :) (Also, it now draws a black line instead of a white one!). And as someone else noted, the timeline bar in the graph editor is now red :)

Interestingly, I can also PRINTSCRN from DVDs/Media Player video now!

[OC-NightHawk]

Says it best.

Thanks to NVIDIA for making old mistake again and using clone GPUs on both gaming and professional display adapters.
:applause:

[Steve McRae]

hey guys,

for those that care, here is my specperf scores for drivers 70.41 and 66.93 using only Rivatuner 15.3 - no driver patching (used the ROM Strap option instead in rivatuner) - note the differences between the two, especially in the Maya score

evga 6800 Ultra --> Quadro 4000

66.93

---------- SUM_RESULTS\3DSMAX\SUMMARY.TXT
3dsmax-03 Weighted Geometric Mean = 35.98
---------- SUM_RESULTS\CATIA\SUMMARY.TXT
catia-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 22.67
---------- SUM_RESULTS\ENSIGHT\SUMMARY.TXT
ensight-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 27.22
---------- SUM_RESULTS\LIGHT\SUMMARY.TXT
light-07 Weighted Geometric Mean = 18.58
---------- SUM_RESULTS\MAYA\SUMMARY.TXT
maya-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 38.82
---------- SUM_RESULTS\PROE\SUMMARY.TXT
proe-03 Weighted Geometric Mean = 48.74
---------- SUM_RESULTS\SW\SUMMARY.TXT
sw-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 25.54
---------- SUM_RESULTS\UGS\SUMMARY.TXT
ugs-04 Weighted Geometric Mean = 44.13

70.41

---------- SUM_RESULTS\3DSMAX\SUMMARY.TXT
3dsmax-03 Weighted Geometric Mean = 38.54
---------- SUM_RESULTS\CATIA\SUMMARY.TXT
catia-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 29.42
---------- SUM_RESULTS\ENSIGHT\SUMMARY.TXT
ensight-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 26.53
---------- SUM_RESULTS\LIGHT\SUMMARY.TXT
light-07 Weighted Geometric Mean = 24.67
---------- SUM_RESULTS\MAYA\SUMMARY.TXT
maya-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 51.19
---------- SUM_RESULTS\PROE\SUMMARY.TXT
proe-03 Weighted Geometric Mean = 50.19
---------- SUM_RESULTS\SW\SUMMARY.TXT
sw-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 27.50
---------- SUM_RESULTS\UGS\SUMMARY.TXT
ugs-04 Weighted Geometric Mean = 41.36

EDIT: here is the same test / same settings using the GeForce 6800 Ultra - no Rivatuner 15.3 - big difference

70.41

---------- SUM_RESULTS\3DSMAX\SUMMARY.TXT
3dsmax-03 Weighted Geometric Mean = 21.87
---------- SUM_RESULTS\CATIA\SUMMARY.TXT
catia-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 13.12
---------- SUM_RESULTS\ENSIGHT\SUMMARY.TXT
ensight-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 15.07
---------- SUM_RESULTS\LIGHT\SUMMARY.TXT
light-07 Weighted Geometric Mean = 11.26
---------- SUM_RESULTS\MAYA\SUMMARY.TXT
maya-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 27.08
---------- SUM_RESULTS\PROE\SUMMARY.TXT
proe-03 Weighted Geometric Mean = 18.47
---------- SUM_RESULTS\SW\SUMMARY.TXT
sw-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 16.20
---------- SUM_RESULTS\UGS\SUMMARY.TXT
ugs-04 Weighted Geometric Mean = 6.035

[gustojunk]

Hi Atomman,

Thanks for posting but I'm confused. Are those 2 driver versions using the 15.3 Softquadro? So they only compare to each other?

Can we see the results before Installing Rivatuner?

Thanks

[Steve McRae]

hey gusto,

yes - those are the results for the two driver versions under 15.3. I'll update the post above with non-rivatuner results (Geforce 6800U) later on today.

[OC-NightHawk]

Isn't 70.x still beta drivers? I'm glad nvidia is working out the gf6 series cards teething issues but I'll wait until the driver is final. last thing I need is a wierd bug to rob me of a day of work. =)

[Steve McRae]

yeah - Nvidia has them on their site in the Quadro section as a beta for the 4000. No problems for me so far - should not be a problem to roll back the drivers if they give you trouble.

I have updated the results for comparing the Geforce 6800U to my modded (Riva 15.3) Quadro 4000. There is quite a gap between the two. You could see it visually in the tests as well as the machine really slowed down to a crawl on quite a few of the tests.

[gaspedalo]

Atomman, do you have your card modded in any way? And how would you recoomend the EVGA 6800U against other Cards (U or GT).
Daniel

[boozy1976]

until now RT 15.3 unfortunately didn't work out for me
i am a prof. maya user and after my wildcat went to manitou
i decided to get a XFX 6800 GT and was desperately waiting for 15.3
yesterday i had some space to give it a try...

it showed a QFX 4000 and everything
but after a while working in maya i had color-artifacts over both screens!
also the roll-down menus and the hotbox got choppy

anyone with the same probs and a solution???
thanks in advance

lorenz

[boozy1976]

i tried RT15.3 with maya

i have a XFX GT card and it shows as a QFX 4000 after installing the NVStrapdriver etc.
but after working in maya for a few minutes i get color artifacts and the rolldown menus plus hotbox get choppy

someone with similar problems amd a solution (right settings?)

thanks in advance

Lorenz

[Steve McRae]

hey gaspedalo,

The card is brand new - right out of the box - no mods at all. The only thing that is used is rivatuner 15.3 - not even any patched drivers.

It is a nice setup - some have used the bios mod for the card but I prefer rivatuner as you can easily switch back and forth between the GeForce and Quadro card with just a reboot. This is helpful if you game at all on your production box. I noticed that some reflections in half-life did not show up under the Quadro drivers but did with the GeForce. A quick change in rivatuner and a reboot and everything is fine.

Would I buy a evga again? I think so - the card is only a week old so I can't give you a totatly difinitive answer. They are supposed to be pretty close to the nvidia factory cards (if not the same) which is why I bought it.

As for a GT vs Ultra, I bought the ultra because I wanted to get something with as much kick as possible. I have seen however on Guru3D's forums that the people who have used rivatuner on their GT's get pretty good bench numbers as well. The ultra has the extra power connector and some more capacitors and stuff - it looks pretty much the same as the real Quadro.

[gaspedalo]

Thanks, that is very useful information. I am thinking about getting one of those 6800 GT or Ultra Cards. My only doubt is the power supply. My Barebones PSY (shuttle sb86i) gets me 280W, wich is less than recommended by most of the 6800 manufacturers. I do not have any other PCI Devices, nor a second hdd inside. So I wonder wether this setup would handle a Ultra or a GT Card.
Further I guess it is still not clear weather the Rivatuner works with the PCI-e Cards (If they will ever be available ;-).

[Steve McRae]

yes - I have heard that you can use a good 450w supply - you will most likely need to upgrade that as well.

Try finding a retailer that sells the cards who will take it back if Rivatuner does not work on it. Even if you have to pay a small restocking fee - it probably would be worth it. If not then stick with agp untill your next upgrade. PCI-e is still pretty new.

=)

[loop29]

i tried RT15.3 with maya

i have a XFX GT card and it shows as a QFX 4000 after installing the NVStrapdriver etc.
but after working in maya for a few minutes i get color artifacts and the rolldown menus plus hotbox get choppy

someone with similar problems amd a solution (right settings?)

thanks in advance

Lorenz
Did you applied the nvstrapantiprotection script to the nv4_mini.sys file? If not, do it and reinstall with the modified file.

regards

[Steve McRae]

that would probably fix it as well, but you should not have to do that with 15.3 . . .

Just select the "Use ROM straps for PCI DeviceID programming" in the NVStrap driver tab . . .

from the FAQ:

"Added "Use ROM straps for PCI DeviceID programming option" for GeForce FX and newer display adapters. This option enables alternate PCI DeviceID programming technique for new graphics processors and fully eliminates the need of installing NVStrapAntiprotection patch script. It is strongly recommended to use this option when selecting non-default graphics adapter identification mode in the driver's properties. "

no more patching needed . . .

:bounce:

[OC-NightHawk]

Did you applied the nvstrapantiprotection script to the nv4_mini.sys file? If not, do it and reinstall with the modified file.

regards
You don't have to and should not modify the quadro driver for a softmoded quadro FX 4000. Don't use a script file intended for softmoding a GF4.

To softmod a GF 6 series card all you need is rt15.3. Once you have that in the nvstrap tab click the unlock professional capabilites check box and set the graphics adapter id to quadro. Click ok, reboot, install a official unmodified quadro driver straight from nvidia.

[boozy1976]

both ways didn't work out for me :sad:
the only difference i noticed is when i patch a quadro driver (6x or 7x)
with the nvantiprotection the color-artifacts are gone
but the rolldownmenus keep choppy

heard about the fastwrite flag...
default its on but no difference when off

by now switched back to GF6 with quadro driver (no NV strap):sad:

wanted the stability/speed of a quadro in maya for a price of a gf6

thanks so far
but any ideas still welcome!

[kex]

hi yeah is the soft mod at all compatible with a 6600 gt agp :? its a nice card just wandering if itl work with it as its got the ddr3 :)

[boozy1976]

@kex: the Quadro also has DDR3...:shrug:

[Steve McRae]

kex - it will work with DDR3; - that is what mine has - it is also supposed to work on any 6xxx series AGP GeForce card - some have reported success with the PCIe cards as well.

boozy - I would start over again

- erase the folder where you had referenced the drivers when you installed them
- uninstall your drivers.
- install 61.76 to start with as that is what Alias has certified

The problem you are describing where Maya starts off fine and then comes to a crawl sounds like what happens when either the nvstrap patch was not used (or used properly) or the new 'ROM Strap' option in 15.3 is not checked off. Use the 'ROM Strap' option rather than the nvstrap patch - there is no need for that anymore with the current drivers.

Your NVStrap dialogue box in rivatuner should look like this:

http://www.atomworks.com/public/nvstrap.gif


Let us know how it works out

[boozy1976]

thanks atom...
used exacly your recipe
but still coppy rolldowns
at all: no difference :sad:

still ideas :eek: ?

[imashination]

Thanks, that is very useful information. I am thinking about getting one of those 6800 GT or Ultra Cards. My only doubt is the power supply. My Barebones PSY (shuttle sb86i) gets me 280W, wich is less than recommended by most of the 6800 manufacturers. I do not have any other PCI Devices, nor a second hdd inside. So I wonder wether this setup would handle a Ultra or a GT Card.
Further I guess it is still not clear weather the Rivatuner works with the PCI-e Cards (If they will ever be available ;-).

That set up will handle both cards with no problems. I used the same system with the older 250watt psu for months with no issues.

[gaspedalo]

Thanks Mathew, these are good news ;-) that already helped for my decision.

[imashination]

Just remember that (last time I checked) most of the ultra edition cards take up two slots, you likely only have space for a single slot card. The GT cards are all single slots.

[loop29]

thanks atom...
used exacly your recipe
but still coppy rolldowns
at all: no difference :sad:

still ideas :eek: ?
report back to Unwinder in the guru3d.com forums and include diagnostic report, which can be found under the main customize rollout. Honestly I think that you failed to apply either the nvstrap driver or didn´t used the antiprotection script correct. Most of the time it´s user related problem, maybe you should have a read into the faq which can be found on guru3d.com too. If nothing else helps pls write down your steps and I´m gonna give advice what to try different. How did you installed the driver, automatic or manual installation? You can check back if quadro capabilities are installed or not with the diagnostic report. In the report categories panel check for the Nvidia grafics processor registers and create new report. The NV_PBUS_DEBUG_1 should say 215749, if the value is 205749 something has gone wrong during the installation of the driver. Choose manual installation and force the target adapter (Quadro FX 4000) to get the appropriate configuration.

regards

[boozy1976]

@loop: the report for NV_PBUS_DEBUG_1 says: 215609 :hmm:

the rest:

$ffffffffff Display adapter information
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$0000000000 Description : NVIDIA Quadro FX 4000
$0000000001 Vendor ID : 10de (NVIDIA)
$0000000002 Device ID : 004e
$0000000003 Location : bus 1, device 0, function 0
$0000000004 Bus type : AGP revision 3.0
$0000000005 AGP status : enabled
$0000000006 AGP rate : 4x 8x supported, 8x selected
$0000000007 AGP SBA : hardwired, enabled
$0000000008 AGP FW : supported, enabled
$0000000009 Base address 0 : fc000000 (memory range)
$000000000a Base address 1 : e0000000 (memory range)
$000000000b Base address 2 : fb000000 (memory range)
$000000000c Base address 3 : none
$000000000d Base address 4 : none
$000000000e Base address 5 : none
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff NVIDIA specific display adapter information
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$0100000000 Graphics core : NV40 revision A1 (16x1,6vp)
$0100000001 Hardwired ID : 0045 (ROM strapped to 004e)
$0100000002 Memory bus : 256-bit
$0100000003 Memory type : DDR (RAM configuration 07)
$0100000004 Memory amount : 262144KB
$0100000005 Core clock : 351.000MHz
$0100000006 Memory clock : 501.188MHz (1002.375MHz effecti...
$0100000007 Reference clock : 27.000MHz
$010000000b HW masked units : none
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff NVIDIA graphics processor registers
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$020100003c CR3C : 00000078
$0200000000 NV_PMC_BOOT_0 : 440e00a1
$0200001080 NV_PBUS_DEBUG_0 : 00000000
$0200001084 NV_PBUS_DEBUG_1 : 00215609
$0200001088 NV_PBUS_DEBUG_2 : 000211f0
$020000108c NV_PBUS_DEBUG_3 : 00000092
$02000010b0 NV_PBUS_DEBUG_CTRIM_0 : 00000092
$02000010b4 NV_PBUS_DEBUG_CTRIM_1 : 00000092
$02000010b8 NV_PBUS_DEBUG_CTRIM_2 : 00000092
$02000010bc NV_PBUS_DEBUG_CTRIM_3 : efffffff
$02000010c4 NV_PBUS_DEBUG_CTRIM_4 : efffffff
$02000010c8 NV_PBUS_DEBUG_CTRIM_5 : efffffff
$02000010cc NV_PBUS_DEBUG_CTRIM_6 : efffffff
$02000010e0 NV_PBUS_DEBUG_PRIV_ASRC : 00000000
$0200100000 NV_PFB_BOOT_0 : 00000000
$0200100080 NV_PFB_DEBUG_0 : f1000020
$0200100200 NV_PFB_CFG : 43003023
$020010020c NV_PFB_CSTATUS : 10000000
$0200100220 NV_PFB_TIMING0 : 060f1b15
$0200100224 NV_PFB_TIMING1 : 09010509
$0200100228 NV_PFB_TIMING2 : 20250407
$02001002c0 NV_PFB_MRS : 00000272
$02001002c4 NV_PFB_EMRS : 0010008b
$0200101000 NV_PEXTDEV_BOOT_0 : a17ee09f
$0200101004 NV_PEXTDEV_BOOT_0_AND : 7e0f403f
$0200101008 NV_PEXTDEV_BOOT_0_OR : 0170a080
$020010100c NV_PEXTDEV_BOOT_1 : 80000090
$0200101010 NV_PEXTDEV_BOOT_1_AND : 7fffffef
$0200101014 NV_PEXTDEV_BOOT_1_OR : 00000010
$020060081c NV_PCRTC_GPIO_EXT : 06050774
$0200680500 NV_PRAMDAC_NVPLL_COEFF : 00041303
$0200680570 NV_PRAMDAC_NVPLL_COEFF_1 : 80000e03
$0200680504 NV_PRAMDAC_MPLL_COEFF : 0004b965
$0200680574 NV_PRAMDAC_MPLL_COEFF_1 : 00000401
$020068050c NV_PRAMDAC_PLL_COEFF_SELECT : 30004f04
$0200001540 NV40_UNITS_CFG : 00013f0f
$0200004004 NV40_PRAMDAC_NVPLL_COEFF : 0d020401
$0200004000 NV40_PRAMDAC_NVPLL_COEFF_1 : c001001c
$0200004024 NV40_PRAMDAC_MPLL_COEFF : 0b021b04
$0200004020 NV40_PRAMDAC_MPLL_COEFF_1 : e000001c
$020000c010 NV40_STRAP0_DEFAULT : 00000000
$020000c014 NV40_STRAP1_DEFAULT : 00000000
$020000c018 NV40_STRAP2_DEFAULT : 00000000
$020000c01c NV40_STRAP3_DEFAULT : 00000000
$020000c020 NV40_STRAP0 : 00000001
$020000c024 NV40_STRAP1 : 00000000
$020000c028 NV40_STRAP2 : 00000000
$020000c02c NV40_STRAP3 : 00000000


btw: i read all FAQs from unwinder what looked important to me


Edit:
i played around with the OGL settings and BAM! by now it works!
everything is fast and by now stable
i simply unchecked enable overlay in OGL in the additional OGL settings

i keep you updated if something goes wrong later on

CHEERS

[loop29]

Great,

hardware overlays are not neccessary anymore for Maya to be enabled, don´t aks me why that´s exactly the case, but I can remember reading a document from alias that stated it is enbled per default if the hardware is capable of using it. In fact I experienced the same that it slows maya down when enabled in the driver settings.

regards

[gustojunk]

Atomman, tHanks for postig the results before using Rivatuner, this is an amazing improvement you've got man!

[Steve McRae]

hey no problem - I bought the card specificaly to softquadro it with rivaturner after 15.3 came out and I have not been disappointed thus far.


cheers, =)

[OzzTheForester]

Has anyone yet tried modding the pci-e version of 6800's to quadro's or have you heard anyone did it?

It's still a big problem to find pci-e 6800gt's but I think for anyone whose planning to buy a complete pc as me, pci-e is crucial.

[OC-NightHawk]

Has anyone yet tried modding the pci-e version of 6800's to quadro's or have you heard anyone did it?

It's still a big problem to find pci-e 6800gt's but I think for anyone whose planning to buy a complete pc as me, pci-e is crucial.
RT at this time only softmods the main display device. So if your hoping to softmod a sli setup with 6800GT PCI-e cards your going to have to bios mod the cards. It should be ok to softmod just one PCI-e with RT 15.3 though, I don't see why PCI-E would be any different.

[gnz]

I tried the soft quadro solution with rivatuner and the nvstrap driver. In Rhino, it works for like 20 seconds then the computer freezes :shrug: Im thus keeping the bios hack better.

BTW, while I have the card in Quadro mode either the bios or softquadro way, Half-Life 2 renders water with no reflections at all, this has me temporarily reverting my card to geForce. I wonder if the real Quadro has this problem too. bummer :hmm:

[OzzTheForester]

Despite I couldnt find any clear resources about converting pci-e 6800gt to quadro I convinced myself to add that card into my list (unfortunately its still just a list)

Now the problem, I cant find the card anywhere in the UK.I will keep on searching till I get my hands on that card.I hope someone can actually mod it to a quadro till then.

[BrianRedoutey]

Anyone have any openGL benchmarks from Maya to post? I"m looking for the specperf Maya tests specifically. I seem to have gotten the softmodding to work and benchmarked the card but it's not where I thought would be. Spec Perf stuff cane be found at www.spec.org but the download for Maya is about 100 MB

I got

GFX: 1.43
I/O 1.25
CPU 1.22

this is with 67.22 of the QuadroFX drivers. And using the NVstrap, and no overlays for OpenGL.

6800 GT card. Wondering if I'm inline with everyone else or if I'm slower, I was hopign there'd be more of a boost.

[novadude]

Now the problem, I cant find the card anywhere in the UK. There aren't many of these available right now. The mid-low end cards that were launched first are available, while the few higher end ones available are bought up by the major pc manufacturers.

[gaspedalo]

no 6800 GT nor ULtra available at the moment in the US at NewEgg (except the expensive XFX GT Card). So I am on StandBy until those Card keep coming. For sure the modding Solution will arrive anyway(at least that's what I am telling myself ;-)

[en-gram]

Well...I tried to softmod my new BFG 6800 GT OC PCI-E card into thinking it is a Quadro FX card using rivatuner. It did unlock some of the openGL settings for overlays and such...and it says "Quadro FX" in bold in display settings. But everywhere else, it says "Geforce 6800 Series GPU"

I'm running the 67.22 drivers. Does anyone know why certain aspects of using rivatuner would make my card act like a quadro...but as a whole the computer won't recognize it as such?

Thanks,
en-gram

[kyrt]

actually which model is best fit for softmod? also which brand of card will be?

[Steve McRae]

hey kyrt,

I don't think that anyone could answer that question unless you had a bunch of the cards together and were able to run some benchys on them. I am happy with mine however. It works well in Maya, modo and LW.

cheers,

[AJLynn]

I read this thread and got curious, and ran RivaTuner's NVStrap on my laptop. My GeForce4 440 Go became a GeForce4 440 GoGL, which doesn't seem to be a real video card as far as I can tell :) And Maxtreme won't have anything to do with it.

Is there a next step that can give me a Quadro 4 440 Go? Or whatever other makebelieve card Maxtreme would want me to have?

[Steve McRae]

unfortunately AJ, I don't think so. The 15.3 softmod will only work with the 6xxx series of cards. Perhaps if you had a go6800 it may work, I have read of this on Guru3D.com but not with the GeForce 4's

Do a search at Guru3D.com - you may be able to use older drivers and get something to work . . .

[AJLynn]

Okay, got a step further here but I still might be on crack - patched an older driver and now I have a nice, stable 32MB Quadro4 500 GoGL. Pretty crazy stuff. Still no Maxtreme, the computer still sucks for 3D work but I'd swear it sucks a little less in Max 6 now. Can anybody point me at the standard benchmark procedure so I can try to verify and quantify this? Also, is this whole thing a very bad idea? :)

http://web.mit.edu/alynn/www/driver-screen.jpg

[itmaya]

Has anyone tried using RT on a 6800gt or ultra PCI-E card??? Does it work? Is it possible for RT to work on 2 6800 SLI cards??
thx

[ktamiola]

Please refer to:

www.guru3d.com (http://www.guru3d.com/) Forum... (section called Riva Tuner)

This is a major problem people are asking for nowadays !

As far as I know (I have got PNY G6800 Ultra AGP8x and patched it with success) there is no such a pach avalible... But if you find something please post the results here ...

Good luck!

[ceql]

Re: gnz

[about HL2] Yea, that happens to me too! I'd also be curious if it happens to real QuadroFX4000 owners too... My guess is this is something that could probably be fixed in future nvidia drivers though, if that is the case.

Re: en-gram

What type of apps still detect your card as a Geforce? All apps seem to sucessfully detect it as a Quadro on my PC. Hmm, Did you set both the PCI Device ID settings (set to Quadro, and also tick Use ROM Straps for PCI DeviceID Programming?) and also tick unlock professional capabilities?

[Caypiranha]

hi there! I was going to do a Test with the Spec4Maya. so, you have to import that Textfile into Exel. When I do this, i got something like that:

Mrz 47 Project File Load
Jul 17 wireframe
Okt 58 smoothShaded
Dez 23 Texture Load Time
14.13 textured
14.75 texturedSelected
14.61 texturedHilited


yeah!! Exel interprets some Values as Dates with Xtra long Months ;))
freaky, isn´t it? - but I am no Exel Pro... :cry:

How could I get prevent from this?

[(2 all english mothertoungs - do you say:
How could I get prevent from this?]


thnx for feedback!

[weasel.acuh5o]

well, to prevent excel from doing this, select the cells which are displayed wrong, right click on them and change the format for the cells to 'numeric value'. (sorry, ain't got the exact steps in my head and no excel around, but that should do the trick)

/florian

[Caypiranha]

Thnx for reply! I´ve tried these settings during TXT import:

Excel 2003

Use delimited with coma and space...Checked on
Dataformat I put checked "Text" the radiobuds, and afterwords,so my first Prob was gone.
But all Values got with a Point instead of a comma and left aligned in theire fields. Some have green Corners. Good, I could fix that by hand, but:

GFX #DIV/0!
I/O #DIV/0!
CPU #DIV/0!
Overall #DIV/0!

are the results

copy/paste-undo/redo comparison from the orig to my one seems no difference...

... :hmm: ...

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