If you want a Quadro...and you have...

[BBA]

A GeForce or Geforce2...you can!
All it cost is a little soldering skill and guts!

NOTE: I will take no responsibility for anyone damaging in any way any PC parts they attempt to modify...NONE!

Whew! Now, for the good stuff...

The GeForce IS the same as a Quadro! If you need to see the benefit of running in Quadro mode, look here:
http://www.nvidia.com/Products/Pages.nsf/pages/Quadro_GF_Compare

To make the card a Quadro, all you have to do is set the logic signal to the GPU by correctly setting it's mode select resistor configuration.

If you have a reference board, remove any resistor from R101 and R102 and place them in the R97 and R98 positions.

If you have a ASUS card, remove any resistors in position R66 and R64, and place them in positions R65 and R63.

(The resistor set on the CL card is under a little white sticker on the backside of the card.)

The source I got this from is here:

http://202.106.168.78/~xtennis/G-Quadro/

and I have a bunch of help stuff here:

http://2cpu.com/ubb/Forum5/HTML/000878.html

Good luck, you'll like it if you do it! http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif ( Unless, of course you screw up your $300 card http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/frown.gif )




[This message has been edited by BBA (edited 07-26-2000).]

[BBA]

Moving Up

[Dr_Watson]

anyone know if the Winfast 256 DDR (a) is running on the reference board?

[Dave2]

Even a Geforce 2 64MB modified into a Quadro 2 is slower than a true Quadro 2. Quadro 2 does 1 Gigapixel/s. Geforce 2 does 800 millon pixels/s. Quadro 2's memory bandwidth is 6.4GB/s and the Geforce 2 is 5.3GB/s.

[JayMan]

So if you want 6.4GB/s bandwidth, use a geforce 2 gts PRO card, e.g. prophet II PRO, has 64MB DDR ram running at 400Mhz. I wish i had the guts to do this to my up comming prophet II PRO.

JayMan

[Mungla]

What? Only 5.3GB/s, ahh you must mean the GTS then! http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif No way I'm going to risk soldering on a $400 video card just for a few "new" options.


Asus CUSL2-C with Promise Ultra/100 PCI controller
Intel Pentium III 700MHz processor @ 933MHz
Mushkin High Performance Rev2 128MB RAM @ 2,2,2,7,9
75&30GB IBM 75GXP Hard Drive
Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 Ultra @ 275,500

[This message has been edited by Mungla (edited 01-07-2001).]

[Dr_Watson]

hate to re-hash old news...
but since my 256 DDr isn't really worth the $300 i payed for it way back in 1999, i was wonderin if this only applies to the GF2 or if mah 256 can get the quadro treatment?

[BBA]

Dave2...the reason why the Quadro is faster than a converted GF2 is the default clock and mem speed is set differently in the Quadro bios. This can be fixed by installing the GF2 bios to Quadro bios.

In case of the GF2 Ultra, it's bios is set faster than the Quadro2 Pro anyway, so bios flash is not good to do there.

As for converting the GF DDr, that was the first card I ever did...and it worked flawlessly too.

[bwkaz]

BBA:

The link to 202.106.168.78 is down ("there was no response or the server is down or not responding" -- Netscape), and ping says "destination host unreachable". NeoTrace Pro (graphical traceroute with whois plus some other stuff) shows it getting right about to Beijing, then it comes back with the "destination host unreachable" thing. Is this just because the server's local time is like 5am? Or are there mirrors somewhere I could look at?

Edit: Never mind about those questions, I found a mirror (or something) here: http://www.geocities.com/tnaw_xtennis/G-Quadro-2.htm

I'll leave the post in case anyone else is looking for the info.

Thanks,

Bryan

GF2 GTS 32MB DDR (reference implementation, I think -- it came from Dell w/no brand names on it)

[This message has been edited by bwkaz (edited 03-25-2001).]

[cyclone2]

http://www.geocities.com/tnaw_xtennis/ and http://members.sitegadgets.com/tnaw_xtennis/board.html
First links after search on Centrapoint http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

May try this now that my 6800 is aging a bit...........

[Dr_Watson]

hmm... wish i was an electrical engineer or something... cuz i know i need to move R102 -> R98 on my leadtek 256(a)... too bad i have no real idea wtf that is supposed to mean.

i've moded enough playstations to be comfortable with close quarters soldering skillz... but those instructions had pics of the boards and solder points for wires and such...

call me a goof, but i'm just not sure what 'moving' r102->r98 is supposed to *mean* without a pic or some kind of better explination than any of the sites i've seen on the mod have said.

if i gather things correctly (i finally managed to dig up a pic) the little black 10k resistor guy bridging r102 just needs to get pulled off and stuck back on so it bridges r98...



[This message has been edited by Dr_Watson (edited 03-25-2001).]

[cyclone2]

Theres lots of pics on the first link I posted, if you have modded playstations it should be easy for you Doc

[Dr_Watson]

welp... moved the SMD over... (**** fine job i must add.. it *almost* looks like it belongs where it is. I even managed to fully clean all the flux off of the pads the little fella used to be on)

whiped off the 256DDR driver.. installed the 650 detonator 3 quadro driver... outputs video just fine... everything seems to be working right as rain...

one more thing though... Leadtek never made a quadro, so i'm wonderin if it would be a good idea or possible to put a quadro bios on...

it still says Geforce DDR when it boots, i was curious if its fully functional as a quadro without the bios?
(kinda like how the bios on the Promise needs to be flashed with the Raid bios when the ATA66 to Raid controler hack is done)

but the important thing is for sure... The card still works =)

anyone know a benchmark that would prove to me that i've actually done something *value added*?

--Tim

[Dr_Watson]

hmm... i'm not sure your suppoed to be doing this to cards that have been running since december of 1999... even though i have a Vice III cu cooling setup on the card i still get some *snow* with the quadro drivers...

i ran some benchmarks and they were all actualy quite slower than before the mod...
so i flashed the bios 1, to check to see if i actually changed anything...
and yes, according to the 'product' code the flash program spits out it was different than the one in the current DDR bios... so i defiantley altered the ID ...

2... i put the SGI qudro nvidia reference bios in... after the bios flash the card still pumps out video, so thats a good sign..

it still get some snow in windows... (oddly only in the start menu and some of the 'properties' windows) (*i'm running 4.10.1998, if that is a possible problem*)

i killed everything in the 'display' reg key, and whacked all the inf's and nv* driver files.. then reinstalled the quadro (650) driver from nvidia...

just trying to explain why the snow is happening... when i was running the DDR drivers i was running @ 140/333 so the 135/333 clock of the quadro really shouldn't cause it to snow, due to overclocking...

wierd...

any insight?

i'm open to suggestions.

-- Dr_Watson

[justy]

Cost, Cost, Cost.

I've done three conversions now, all sucessful. Improved performance, hands down!

Its a matter of cost effectivness, if you need the best, buy the best. If you want to improve on what you have?

All the best, Justy.

[BBA]

I did have two instances where performance went down. One was not acceptable at all and was converted back.

The best ones I did were Hercules ( GF2MX and GF2U ) The others just seemed to perform about the same but with all the quadro functionality.