SoftQuadro4

[skelter]

Hi everyone!

SoftQuadro4 is out.
www.nvworld.ru/docs/sq4e.html

[dvornik]

Great news. Post your benchmarks!

[grocs]

Well it works... my Geforce 4 ti4400 registers as a Quadro 4 750XGL and has lots of extra OpenGL features will do tests soon and reply

EDIT: Hrmm speeds using the 3Dtest from www.maya-testcenter.de shows no difference when using is in Maya 4.5 it might even be a little slower...

EDIT EDIT: As an extra note... I recently re-installed my OS and and put in Maya 4.5 and found my GF 4 TI4400 ran at about 20 fps slower in wireframe mode compared to Maya 4... and I`m sure I installed everything the same way... anyone know why this might be?

EDIT EDIT EDIT: sigh 30 mintues of use and I think my card just fried... screen color went all funny... computer reset and black screen no display... turned off computer quickly by the mains...

EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT: the card is fine but the drivers are all messed up... will not venture in this direction again unless someone else has success...

EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT: Tried again and its been working for a few hours just fine... I must have done something wrong in settings before.

[mnhan32]

LOL sounds like you having a tough time over there.

we appreciate your notes and persistance though!

[grocs]

lol yah... it scared me for a minute... but it works perfectly fine now I have even overclocked it and it boosted my test times by about 10fps in wireframe mode now its running rock solid and I can use artisan perfectly.

[grocs]

Having realised after re-installing my OS I had missed a key driver for my motherboard I find now my test results are almost doubled in wireframe mode using Soft Quadro 4

the computer I am using is as follows

Dual AMD Athlon 1900+ (OC`d when rendering to 2100+)
1GB DDR ECC Buffered memory
1x 30GB 7200rpm WD 2MB Cache for OS (IDE)
2x 120GB 7200rpm WD 8MB Cache for Projects (RAID)
1x 16x DVD Drive
1x 32x CD-RW Drive

and of course my trusty Visiontek GF4 Ti 4400 128MB

Previous results using mayatest-center.de 3Dtest.mb file are as follows:

Geforce 4 Ti4400 basic

Wireframe Mode = 48.9 FPS
Shaded Mode = 26.5 FPS
Texture Mode = 17.5 FPS
Textured and Lit = 7.5 FPS
Shade and Lit = 7.5 FPS

GF4 Ti4400 changed and overclocked to Quadro 4 750XGL

Wireframe Mode = 84.7 FPS
Shaded Mode = 28.5 FPS
Texture Mode = 19.1 FPS
Textured and Lit = 7.8 FPS
Shaded and Lit = 7.8 FPS

So wireframe mode gets the biggest hit... the others are only slightly different on my card anyway.

[skelter]

Your benchs results are a bit disapointed, what about hardware overlays?

[grocs]

tell me how to do that and I`ll try it and give you the results.

[skelter]

You have to set your OpenGl settings on Maya.
Hardware Overlays are in use specially with artisan based tools and some Nurbs stuffs(texture placement, trims).

You sayed that you have overclocked your card so you don't know if it's the newer clock speed or the SoftQuadro trick that increase your wireframe perfs.

[grocs]

I used soft quadro then overclocked it... its about 10fps slower in wirframe the other modes are unaffected. I had already set it to maya to get those results before.

[-b-]

Just wondering....I just got a Ti4600 today and tried out this test (with the newest drivers from Nvidia). Here's what I got...seems a little low, what settings should I tweak.

wireframe- 43.5
shaded- 28.3
textured-17.5
lights-6.5
shaded and lights-6.5

I'm skeptical about this softquadro thing but what kinda drivers / settings should I have this card at?? It's a LeadTek WinFast A250 Ti4600.

[1000101-]

Did everyone remember to nvstrap
then softquadro
then install the sq drivers?

[grocs]

I know I had a little problem installing NVstrap... that might cause some problems I guess... the driver I was using was the 40.71 one I think... but I`m willing to go through everything again to make sure its done righthits time knowing now what exactly to do.

[1000101-]

from what I recall on the release notes for sq4; yo need to do some extra steps to get the 40.xx series drivers to work correctly.

[grocs]

really? damn I didin`t see that part... thanks for pointing it out

after checking it says

"Detonator driver which is supported by the scripts (to the moment of writing these scripts are fully functional with versions 27.xx

[grocs]

Ok to get maximum performance out of my card I re-installed everything on my computer OS an all... (4 hours of work) everything went in, win2k, motherboard drives (except agp ones), regular software, photoshop like software, video software then 3D software (Game always go on another drive). Direct X and then finally those agp patches for my motherboard and the regular driver for my Nvidia GF 4 Ti4400... version 40.72... followed the instructions for installing softquadro4, on the Quadro drivers... version 41.03... everything went fine without a hitch this time and I`m just about to test my results... I will edit this post when I have those test results now...

EDIT: The results are the same... go figure... I must have done it right the first time... oh well atleast my computer is running more smoothly now I`ve re-installed everything

By the way the instructions for installing are much better at www.madonion.com in their discussion forums

[skelter]

In fact for the first time Nvidia has produced two different chips for the pro and the game lines.
The SoftQuadro4 trick will be fine for common hardware features on the two GPU but will not for specific Quadro stuffs.
Under Max the SoftQuadro cards seems to match all the Quadro's perfs(through MAX extreme) since no specific tasks are required(AA as an example).
Under Maya i'm not sure the SoftQuadros could use Hardware Overlay planes and other stuffs so the wiewport acceleration use only the basic Geforce4's OpenGl .
The emulation is not perfect since the chips are not similar maybe it's the reason why U got poor bench results

[1000101-]

Its possible you have an earlier revision board; which doesn't do AA as well as later revision gf4's.
Was reading the nvworld.ru guys writeup on the whole thing.
never the less text labels disapeer less now and thats all that matters to me.

[grocs]

mine is more stable now its a quadro... so I`ll wait till I can get my hands on an NV30 or if I have a job soon then purchase the latest quadro card when it comes out.