I've noticed a lot of posting regarding SoftQuadro, just thought I'd share my experiences.
System:
P4 1.4 512 Rambus Ram
Gigabyte Geforce2 Pro modified into Quadro2 Pro
Running XP, Using Latest ELSA Drivers.
I have modified the card in hardware to allow me to use ELSA drivers. Two resistors where moved with minimal trouble (I didn't really have the tools for the job, soldiering iron tip was too large).
Remember that standard Geforce 2 Pro's have core and ram freqency set at 200/200 and Quadro2 Pro has them at 250/200. As far as I'm aware, these are the only technical differences.
Having made the mod, my detonator drivers detected the card as a 64mb Quadro2 Pro. A look towards OpenGL options reveled a few extra boxes to be ticked... Overlays etc.
A quick benchmark with VeiwPerf6.12 showed a substantial increase in AWadvs-04 from 40-ish to 72.... Note that at this time the card is still running at if default... 200/200.
Next came flashing my cards Bios with the latest ELSA GLoria III bios. After this update, the number jumped from 72 to 89.49... BUT. I noticed glitches to my standard desktop. I got funny patches of colour over certain parts of the screen. Later I tried older Bios's from ELSA, these worked perfectly, only performance was back to the level of the unmodified BIOS.
I've noticed that the old BIOS's, ran the system at 200/333 Which is the same speen of the older Geforce2 GTS. The Latest BIOS runs at 250/200. Hence this is where the speed increase is from. So it seemed that the card didn't like having a core clock of 250 with ELSA bios's.
I next super charged my original bios from Gigabyte to run at a clock of 250/200. This ran, with no glitches on the screen and giving the same numbers as the ELSA bios, albert 1 or 2 marks lower.
Next came the stability text. For this I ran consecative benchmarks in ViewPerf6.12, after 3 sequencies, the system would hang.
After much fidaling around (two nights of testing without sleep and caffene) I came to the conclusion that without extra cooling (my machine lays bare on my desk, so cooling is already slightly more than an enclosed case), running at a core clock of 250 was a litle too much.
Lowering the clock to 230 sloved the problem. Not being happy with the numbers (I wanted a card a least the spec of a REAL GLoria III) I tweaked the system futher until I found a 'so far' stable setting of 240/210.
This gave me better performance than the standard ELSA bios at 250/200. Without maybe a few more heatsink's over the ram and maybe a larger fan on the GPU (note the GLoria III has heasink over everything) I wouldn't try to push the card any further.
So now I have a Geforce2 Pro running as though it were a Quadro2 Pro, what I now need to know, is does it run as fast as a REAL GLoria card. A look towards the review on Tomshardware guide shows that in their benchmarks AWadvs-04 ran at the jaw dropping 125!!!! But they are running Windows 2000 Pro. Maybe this is where the differences are.
I have my system set up pretty well, and reluctant to install Windows 2000 for even more testing (I REALLY NEED SLEEP).
So if anyone reading this has either a modified card using resistors or SoftQuadro, let me know of your results in ViewPerf6.12.
If anyone has a genuine GLoria III or GLoria DCC, let me know of the numbers you recieve from it. So once and for all, I will know if this modified card is running anywhere near as fast as a REAL GLoria III...
Hope this post helps someone save a few more hours of sleep, and reduce the need to test as dilegently as I have.
My final System settings and results are as follows.
System:
P4 1.4 512 Samsung Rambus RAM.
61. gig IBM Deskstar 60GXP
Gigabyte 8TM Motherboard. Gigabyte Geforce2 Pro 64MB
Windows XP Pro, Latest ELSA Drivers.
(Nvidia Drivers give slightly higher benchmarks...notably on Drv07)
Card Details: Original BIOS running at core/ram 240/210.
ViewPerf Results:
Note Vsync is off
---------- SUM_RESULTSAWADVSSUMMARY.TXT
AWadvs-04 Weighted Geometric Mean = 94.02
---------- SUM_RESULTSDRVSUMMARY.TXT
DRV-07 Weighted Geometric Mean = 19.24
---------- SUM_RESULTSDXSUMMARY.TXT
DX-06 Weighted Geometric Mean = 36.40
---------- SUM_RESULTSLIGHTSUMMARY.TXT
Light-04 Weighted Geometric Mean = 9.956
---------- SUM_RESULTSMEDMCADSUMMARY.TXT
MedMCAD-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 31.99
---------- SUM_RESULTSPROCDRSSUMMARY.TXT
ProCDRS-03 Weighted Geometric Mean = 31.20
