2CPU.com » News » January 2001 » GTS to Quadro Hack in Detail

I know quite a few of you (us) have been interested in the whole "turn your GTS into a Quadro" hack to gain a bit of workstation performance from our gaming cards for minimal cash outlay. What does the mod *really* do for us though? I mean, is it really worth the risk of ruining your new $200+ videocard? Well... I have seen it first hand (I have a real Quadro and I have seen the modded ones in action as well) and I can say that it is worth it for some of you. To find out if you might benefit from a Quadro, Mellenger has whipped up a guide/review of a hacked Quadro for your reading pleasure. Here's a teaser:

The GeForce line of 3D accelerators are very powerful for consumer card, and games that support T&L are few and far between. So NVIDIA has done what any good corporation would do, something I like to call 'pulling an Intel'.

What NVIDIA did was something similar to what Intel when they released the Xeon line of processors. Not much different than standard PIII, the Xeon processors were marketed as a server line of processors. Sure the cache is bigger, but is that really worth charging five times the price? The reason they charge such high prices is that they can. People buying servers are already paying $20,000 dollars (minimum) so paying $2000 for their processor seems to make sense.

So NVIDIA headed into the professional sector, where charging $800 US for a 3D accelerator is considered cheap. Now nobody -- Intel included -- wants to spend the money to build another assembly line for a limited run product, the smartest thing to do is modify your existing product line. So this is what NVIDIA does. Currently the GeForce 2 GTS, The GeForce 2 Ultra and the Quadro 2 Pro use the same cores. The GeForce 2 MX and the Quadro MXR also use the same GPU core.

duke Posts: 108 Joined: 2000-05-19

#7278 Posted on: 02/17/2005 08:58 PM The Register has posted a review of IBM's Thinkpad T42p. The T42p sports ATI's Mobility Fire GL T2 workstation graphics chip. What sets a workstation chip apart from standard graphics chips is its certification for use with certain high-end graphical design packages. So if you want a notebook to run a CAD package, or a 3D rendering application, you'll want one that has a graphics chip approved by the software vendor. That way, when you run a preview of that complicated scene that you've been working on for days, you know it will work. This really does look like a mobile workstation. You might want to take a look.

duke Posts: 108 Joined: 2000-05-19

#7279 Posted on: 02/17/2005 09:38 PM Mozilla's Firefox has reached the 25 Million download plateau! A website by the name of spreadfirefox.com has the story. With a minimal set of tools

duke Posts: 108 Joined: 2000-05-19

#7280 Posted on: 02/17/2005 10:20 PM Mozilla's Firefox has reached the 25 Million download plateau! A website by the name of spreadfirefox.com has the story. With a minimal set of tools

Jim_ Administrator Posts: 3464 Joined: 2000-03-15

#7281 Posted on: 02/17/2005 10:25 PM The guys over at SFFTech have posted a review of Iwill's ZMAXdp SFF. If I'm not mistaken, Hooz is running one of these units in the secret 2CPU.com underground test bunker. After previewing two "engineering samples" and now reviewing the final shipping product, we can confidently say that the ZMAXdp continues to amaze us. As you [url="http://www.2cpu.com"][size=1]2CPU.com[/url] - Because two are always better than one! [url="http://www.jimkirk.org"]jimkirk.org[/url] - Not a Myth any Longer. Just a Dad.[/size]

duke Administrator Posts: 108 Joined: 2000-05-19

#7282 Posted on: 02/17/2005 10:31 PM Mozilla's Firefox has reached the 25 Million download plateau! A website by the name of spreadfirefox.com has the story. With a minimal set of tools

Jim_ Administrator Posts: 3464 Joined: 2000-03-15

#7283 Posted on: 02/17/2005 10:33 PM testing. [url="http://www.2cpu.com"][size=1]2CPU.com[/url] - Because two are always better than one! [url="http://www.jimkirk.org"]jimkirk.org[/url] - Not a Myth any Longer. Just a Dad.[/size]

2CPU.com » News » January 2001 » GTS to Quadro Hack in Detail