For NVidia owners
Turn your GeForce2MX into a Quadro2 Pro
Turn your TI4400 into a Quadro 4 750XGL
Turn your TI4600 into a Quadro 4 900XGL
Using SoftQuadro or SoftQuadro4 respectively, the software changes some video card registeries to make it think it’s a professional grade grapics card. FPS does not increase, but it unlocks certain features like hardware anti-aliased line support. If you download RivaTuner, not only does it have built-in SoftQuadro support, but also low-level tweaks including overclocking. I was able to overclock my TI4400 (now a Quadro4 750XGL) from 275/550 (GPU/memory clocks in MHz) to 315/630! That’s a 15% increase and it’s absolutely stable! I could overclock it to 330/660, but I started to see some artifacts, so I bumped it down 15 MHz.
Download the software here:
For ATI owners Edit!!! Rivatuner version 2.0 now supports ATI Radeon 8500/9000/9700 support
Turn your ATI Radeon 9500 (non-pro) into a Radeon 9700 (non-pro)!
Well… from what the post seemed to imply, Nvidia “disables” features of more powerful chipsets to create the “bargain” chipsets. It actually makes sense, as they only have to design one chipset, and only have to have one production method that way. If that’s what they do, it’s similar to how Intel did their Celeron. At first, it was just a P2 without I think the L2 cache. A while after they’d been in the market though, I read an article which talked about Intel’s plans to “throttle” the Celeron. It seems the lack of that extra cache only caused about a 5% drop in performance, people were wising up to it, and buying the far cheaper chip. Intel didn’t like this, so they had plans to start throttling the performance on the Celerons… not exactly sure how, but either way, it was still the same CPU as the P2.
Then, of course, the other option is overclocking.
Doh… just thought of another good example… automobiles. Most modern cars have chips in them which regulate performance, and in almost every case, they hinder the performance of your vehicle. I saw a website with a guy who really loves his Camaro SS, and did a lot to it. Part of the site talked about all the mods he did to the chip (with a PC and special software) to remove the performance blocks.
Some of these blocks are in place to increase gas mileage, so the vehicles can fit with certain regulations, and others are just for “safety”, and likely to keep law enforcement happy (such as the “max speed” limit). Reminds me of this go cart track I used to go to long time ago. They had the carts set so the gas pedal would only open the throttle so much. The control bar from the pedal to the throttle (engine in back) passed right by my side, and I found out you can floor it, and if you push on the bar, you open the throttle up even more, past where they set it. Hehe… I had some attendant blow a whistle at me, and tell me if I did it again, I’d be banned from coming back.
Right, SoftQuadro only unlocks features that had been disabled in the non-professional line of cards. These features are:
Hardware overlay planes
Hardware antialiased lines
Two-sided lighting
I should have mentioned that you’ll need to download the latest NVidia drivers. After you make the change in SoftQuadro or RivaTuner, you must reboot your computer. When Windows comes up, it won’t recognize your graphics adaptor.
I tried that on my GeForce2MX and it worked but didn’t seem to do much. In fact my OpenGL games ran worse than before and no noticable improvement in preformance in Blender, which dosn’t rely much on the card.
I tried that on my GeForce2MX and it worked but didn’t seem to do much. In fact my OpenGL games ran worse than before and no noticable improvement in preformance in Blender, which dosn’t rely much on the card.
You won’t see much (if at all) of an improvement in Blender because it doesn’t take advantage of the quadro features. Max, Maya, Soft Image, LightWave, etc. do.
You should try RivaTuner to overclock your card- it boosted my 3DMark score from 9927 to 11023.
