VOGONS


First post, by Repo Man11

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As mentioned in the retro hardware thread, I recently purchased a Quadro FX 4000 AGP card for $10.00, and other than a slightly less robust cooler, it appears identical to the EVGA 6800 Ultra that I have. I initially tried it as is, and while it worked fine, it had an issue with water in Half-Life Source and Half-Life 2. I was able to change the card's ID with Riva Tuner, and that solved the issue with the water. I then found that one of the pixel units was disabled, and I was able to make that functional with Riva Tuner (from 12PP to 16, same as the 6800). After making these changes, for some reason Riva Tuner won't overclock the card; if you enable it and increase the clock speed even a tiny bit, it says that it failed the test.

When you look online, by far what you find are twenty year old posts where people were trying to make their 6800 Ultras into Quadro cards, which is easy enough to understand considering the price difference. The core speed is only 25 MHz lower than the 6800 Ultra, so without upgraded cooling any meaningful speed increase is out. I've never tried to change a card's ID with a different BIOS, so I don't know if this would work out risk/benefit wise.

After watching many YouTube videos about older computer hardware, YouTube began recommending videos about trains - are they trying to tell me something?

Reply 1 of 4, by Repo Man11

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To put it another way - if you were me, would you flash this card to a BIOS for a 6800 Ultra, or leave it as is?

Added pix of the before and after of the Half-Life2 water.

After watching many YouTube videos about older computer hardware, YouTube began recommending videos about trains - are they trying to tell me something?

Reply 2 of 4, by Wes1262

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Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-03-24, 15:05:

To put it another way - if you were me, would you flash this card to a BIOS for a 6800 Ultra, or leave it as is?

Added pix of the before and after of the Half-Life2 water.

Hi! What did you end up doing? I am thinking of doing the same.

Reply 3 of 4, by Repo Man11

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Wes1262 wrote on 2024-11-01, 16:24:
Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-03-24, 15:05:

To put it another way - if you were me, would you flash this card to a BIOS for a 6800 Ultra, or leave it as is?

Added pix of the before and after of the Half-Life2 water.

Hi! What did you end up doing? I am thinking of doing the same.

I've left it as is, but I did find a good reason to consider flashing it. I bought an aftermarket card cooler for my 6800 Ultra, and I used the stock cooler on this card since using this card for 3D applications makes it heat up very quickly with the single slot cooler that it comes with. Though the stock 6800 Ultra cooler is better, the FX4000's BIOS doesn't vary fan speed with temperature the way the 6800's does, so even with the better cooler, the card still hit some pretty high temps when running 3D benchmarks so I used Riva Tuner to up the fan speed to 75%. But again, Riva Tuner provided a work around that does the job without messing with the card's BIOS

After watching many YouTube videos about older computer hardware, YouTube began recommending videos about trains - are they trying to tell me something?

Reply 4 of 4, by The Serpent Rider

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There is no real reason to flash it. Nvidia Forceware works with Quadro cards just fine. Half-Life 2 is an exception, but it had water shader issues with 6xxx/7xxx series for a long time.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.