First post, by Reputator
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~~YES, SOLDERING SKILLS ARE REQUIRED FOR THIS MOD! DO NOT BOTHER UNLESS YOU ARE EXPERIENCED!~~
If you saw my previous thread, you know I received a big package containing, among other things, a working ELSA Gloria II, which is a Quadro SDR based on the NV10. Good card, great find, but not a GeForce 256, and therefore, sadly, not as useful to me in benchmarks.
But rather than spending X amount of months searching and overpaying for the real deal, what if I could modify it into a GeForce 256? I looked up mods for turning GeForces into Quadros, and found this:
http://www.oocities.org/tnaw_xtennis/G-Quadro-2.htm
So simply reversing that would get me a GeForce, right? I had to put it to the test.
For reference, these are the two cards I have that I'll be modifying.
For the Quadro SDR, resistors R557 and R567 have to be changed. Each one moves down to R558 and R568 respectively. (Click to enlarge.)
The end result should look like this:
Then on the Quadro2 Pro:
Resistor R122 will be moved up to R121, and that's all you have to do!
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The results? SUCCESS!
In both cases, they're identified as a GeForce, and the drivers make no reference to a Quadro card! This is quite unlike the failed approach of using RivaTuner and modifying the Device ID, which only changes the name of the card (effectively) but is still treated by drivers as a Quadro.
No BIOS flashing or modification necessary. So to keep benchmarks accurate, you will need to clock the newly-made GeForce 256 down from 135MHz core to 120MHz.
For the GeForce2 Ultra, even though it is identified as an Ultra, the clockspeeds are still set to a GeForce2 Ti equivalent. You'll need to overclock the memory to 460MHz from the stock 400MHz, which I believe just about all of them can do no problem.
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I didn't do too many benchmarks as the subject of Quadro vs GeForce performance has been covered already and quite extensively by others, but I did do a few for verification purposes:
Quadro SDR @ 120MHz core
GeForce 256 SDR
Quadro SDR @ 120MHz core
GeForce 256 SDR
Quadro2 Pro @ Ultra speeds
GeForce2 Ultra
Quake 3 (1280x1024x32 maxed):
Quadro SDR @ 120MHz: 27fps
GeForce 256 SDR: 31.1fps
Quadro2 Pro @ Ultra: 71.6fps
GeForce2 Ultra: 81.6fps
Doom 3 (640x480 low):
Quadro2 Pro @ Ultra: 17.8fps
GeForce2 Ultra: 17.9fps
As you can see, the 3DMark scores are pretty much a wash. Doom 3 is the same as well. Quake 3 results are a lot more interesting, with significantly improved performance. I'll be doing a lot more tests on my GeForce2 Ultra since I already accumulated tons of test results during its Quadro days, so let me know if you want to see more comparisons of those.
In both cases there are inherent advantages in "downgrading" from Quadro cards. The ELSA Gloria II was equipped with 64MB of memory, twice that of a normal GeForce 256 SDR. The Quadro2 Pro creates a very fancy GeForce2 Ultra with VGA and DVI.
I decided to do this as I was gearing up to try to fix my TNT2 Ultra, and needed some practice at soldering tiny resistors and capacitors (the TNT2 has several knocked off, unfortunately). I noticed my Gloria II also had several resistors and a tantalum cap knocked off, but still worked, and my broken Gloria II had almost all of them still. So I practiced by moving the missing components from my borked Gloria II to my awesome one. After I was successful there, I thought, why not try something crazy?! It always bothered me that my results with the Quadro2 Pro were slightly off from a real GeForce2, and obviously a Quadro SDR has the same problem.
Hope some people found this useful!
