[MOVED] Hacking NVidia Cards into their Professional Counterparts

[SonicAndSmoke]

Hi

After successfully soft-strapping some GeForce 8, 9, 200 & 400 cards to their Quadro counterpart, i'd like to modify my Gigabyte GTX 670 (GTX 680 pcb). Hard-modding is planned for the future (when i have a shiny new card and can afford toying around with Ol' Kepler), now i'm just looking for the K10 softmod (i'm ok with no-vga-passthrough when softmodding only, as it's for educational purposes).
I've read that it's possible just like with 4x0 -> Quadro Mod, but i've failed in finding the location for the soft straps in a Kepler GK104 bios. Are they still located @ 0x58-0x67 in a non-UEFI bios? If yes, is it then correct to assume they're located @ 0x458-0x467 in a UEFI bios?

I also would like to flash a real Quadro 5000 bios on my now-softstrapped GTX 470 and thus need to limit the amount of VRAM. I've found in some posts the offsets 9e00 - 9e30 for Kepler cards, is this also the right place for Fermi cards?

Thanks (and sorry for asking maybe redundant questions)

/edit:

I've found the posting about the part-soft-mod (#739), and still want to do that (as it's easily reversible). So i found a posting about soft-strapping Kepler (#602) , and it looks like my bios is already unlocked so now i'm still looking for the strap location to go from 1189 to 118F.

And for clarification: for hard-modding my Gigabyte GTX 670 WF3 2GB (based on reference 680 pcb) i only need to remove the 4th resistor from the back for Tesla K10, or remove resistor 1 & 3 from the front for GRID K2?

/edit2:

Regarding the soft-straps on Kepler: according to this posting

GT650M and GTX660M are based on GK107 which is a Kepler generation chip. You can use the soft-straps in the BIOS to change the device ID, same as on earlier Fermi and Tesla GPUs...

the strap area is to be found @ 0x58-0x67. But when looking at this offset, i only find the generic-looking

Code: [Select]

FF FF FF 7F 00 00 00 00 FF FF FF 7F 00 00 00 80 which doesn't look like any bootstrap i've seen in Fermi bioses.
Could anyone point me into the right direction with this?

[gordan]

Has anybody checked if the modifying the cards removes the limit on the number of simultaneous nvenc encoding sctreams available? GeForce cards are limited to 2 simultaneous H.264 encoding streams, but Quadro/Grid cards are supposed to be able to handle more.

(Note: NVENC only exists on Kepler and Maxwell GPUs, there is no support for it on Fermi and earlier GPUs.)

[ptcptc]

Hello, i have an EVGA GTX 660Ti FTW Signature .
Please if anyone could guide me what to do and in what i can transform it i will really be thankfull.
I use it in a hackintosh.
Here you can find the data about it, and also mentions that uses the 680 reference PCB:
http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=997&page=1

I can post pictures of the pcb, but before taking the coolers of i need to know if i can transform it to professional.

Thank you in advance

[xeushant]

Guys, tell me please. I am not a professional. I'm stupid layman.
But let's say we want to modify the GTX Titan X in Quadro M6000. All their parameters are absolutely identical. In addition to supporting Quadro FP64. For this option are responsible drivers?
Those cards are unable to modify successfully, such as the GTX690 in Quadro K5000. This is fully consistent with the modified 690 professionals tests K5200? Or, in fact, this card is the card that supports only 690 drivers from K5200?
If the tests modified card matches the original. So I think that many people would be willing to pay well for such a modification.
Personally, I would have been happy to buy a modified M6000.

[C.Azrael]

Hi guys, maybe GeForce GTX 970/GeForce GTX 980 could mod to Quadro M4000/Quadro M5000? same core GM204 O0

[wtopace]

Not sure if anyone is still following this topic, but I would like to request some help identifying R1-R4 on this card. The card is an Asus GT640-DCSL-2GD3. I have posted pictures below showing U10 and the surrounding resistors. Please let me know if you need any more information!

Thanks!

[stlnstln]

Not sure if anyone is still following this topic, but I would like to request some help identifying R1-R4 on this card. The card is an Asus GT640-DCSL-2GD3. I have posted pictures below showing U10 and the surrounding resistors. Please let me know if you need any more information!

Thanks!

I have this exact same card and problem. I am also looking for the proper resistors.
I would really appreciate the help getting a K1 into my PowerEdge R710!!

[k1200]

(need SFF form factor)

turns out that K1200 is hobbled to not support vt-d; unofficial nvidia sources say vt-d needs 2000 or higher.

has anyone done K1200 -> K2200?

[thisisawesome]

Hi all. This is a really great topic. I recently bought a 970 but it's performance in CAD programs is abysmal. Is it possible to turn the 970 into a pro card?

If not, what are some high-end consumer cards that can be converted?

Thank you :-)

[kazimnaim]

Hello

Is there a real working mod for Titan X. I got 4 Titan X and would like to get these into ESXI

Currently it is detected as TitanX and i can install the drivers as well in VM.. windows shows error code 43

Anyone ?

Regards

Kazim

[phucpd]

Hi,

Has anybody checked if the modifying the cards removes the limit on the number of simultaneous nvenc encoding sctreams available? GeForce cards are limited to 2 simultaneous H.264 encoding streams, but Quadro/Grid cards are supposed to be able to handle more.

(Note: NVENC only exists on Kepler and Maxwell GPUs, there is no support for it on Fermi and earlier GPUs.)

I aslo wonder the same thing, willing to give a 980 to be modified to see if they can handle more than 2 sessions for nvenc encoding. If you are interested pls contact me. Thank you very much

[smanet]

Hi all,

Recently I've just bought a Asus GT640-2GD3 thinking that the PCB and resistors placement should be the same as 1GD3 but apparently it's not. I've tried to locate the R1 - R4 eg R543 resistor but I cannot find it on the board. Could you help me out here please to identify the resistors to change this to Grid K1? Thanks a million in advance. I've attached the images as well Do kindly let me know if it's not sufficient

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/hacking-nvidia-cards-into-their-professional-counterparts/msg362703/#msg362703

I was wondering if anybody was able to mod a GT640-2GD3, I have actually did the same mistake, I have bought a used card hoping to modify it to K1, but I can't find anybody that was successful with this card.
Could you please let me know? I can even take off the the heat sink if that could help.
Thank you!!

[Godtakeit]

I have a Titan X extreme edition and would like to know if anyone would want to try to explore whether we can convert it into the M6000.

Anything, picture board layout, bios, I can provide.

[Dikkiedik]

Hi all,

I am also curious how to mod a GTX Titan X to a M6000.

Some info about it is highly appreciated!
Thanks...

[Bobthecooldad]

i do appologise to reply to an old thread.
Was doing some research and instead of converting my GTX650 (1GB) to a k2 what is the wrong core, would it be possible to convert it to a quadro K600 as it has the same specs as the GTX 650.
Wondering what the values of the resistors would have to be and what position, also bit confused if i need to reflash the bios with nvflash or if i need to edit the hex or if i need to use a ttl programmer to rewrite the bios (can do all 3 but would rather not do the last one)

[nhp12345]

wow, comeback to this thread after 3 years makes me feel so nostalgic!  O0
I'm going to do a hardmoding with my GTX 750Ti (Quadro K2200 counterpart). Hopefully all the electrical engineer lessons and stuffs gained through the last 3 years could help me understand "this world" a bit more!    But before touching it, there are a couple of "million" questions that I wish to be enlighten 

• Can anyone give me a full instruction (or short hints) on how to track down these strap registers?
  
• Did anyone here successfully mod the Maxwell generation to their quadro counterpart?
  
• Can anyone provide me the high res picture of the quadro K2200 pcb?
  

Thanks for your help!     

[bufu1O1]

wow, comeback to this thread after 3 years makes me feel so nostalgic!  O0
I'm going to do a hardmoding with my GTX 750Ti (Quadro K2200 counterpart). Hopefully all the electrical engineer lessons and stuffs gained through the last 3 years could help me understand "this world" a bit more!    But before touching it, there are a couple of "million" questions that I wish to be enlighten 

• Can anyone give me a full instruction (or short hints) on how to track down these strap registers?
  
• Did anyone here successfully mod the Maxwell generation to their quadro counterpart?
  
• Can anyone provide me the high res picture of the quadro K2200 pcb?
  

Thanks for your help!     

I'll send you the picture in 2 days tops with the quadro K2200 pcb . I have a video card Asus GTX750Ti and I want to mod it to make a Quadro K2200 so be able to GPU Passthrought on my ESXi 5.5 server. without that mod, my VM Windows 7 not stop showing error 43.

My pc specs: ESXi 5.5 u2 on Core i5 4690, 8GB ram, ASRock Z97 Extreme6 with dual NIC support(onboard intel and realtek both gigabit) with Asus GTX750Ti https://www.asus.com/Graphics-Cards/GTX750TIOC2GD5/

LE: Pictures suck, i told the guy who sell this video card to make a better picture with the upper-right corner where the screw seems to have attached something, that's where resistors seems to be sticked on pcb; I'll post that picture when i get it. I'll post a picture soon with my gtx750ti also

Later later Edit: I uploaded more pictures..still the pictures are not good. I will get to a client who has this card in his workstation and i'll make some good quality pictures.

[nhp12345]

I would also like to post a BIG THANKS to everyone that has donated so far, we are at $300 with $700 remaining at the time of this post.

I plan to video the modification of the GTX690 with before and after benchmarks which will be posted on YouTube. I will also record the process of finding the hardware straps for the other GPU through deductive reasoning and simple testing that is relatively safe to the hardware. So if you want to see this, throw a little into the pool so I can get a card I can safely do this on.

Once we have all the information all figured out I will trawl through this thread and compile everything into a single post making it easy to reference.

Hi gnif, have you made this "tutorial" already? I couldn't find it anywhere! 

[Beej]

I'm going to do a hardmoding with my GTX 750Ti (Quadro K2200 counterpart).

I would LUV this! 
I have Asus STRIX-GTX750TI-OC-2GD5 https://www.asus.com/us/Graphics-Cards/STRIXGTX750TIOC2GD5/ (hopefully very similar to yours)

also happily running ESXi (v6u2)...currently on a cheap and quiet! Radeon 7570
FYI for anyone looking, ESXi vtx-d compatible $30-$40 OEM 2GB AMD 7570's are plentiful on eBay, especially Dell's (DVI, DP) http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=ATI+RADEON+HD+7570... i scored a nice compact HP model (695635-001) w/all 3 digital ports (DP, HDMI, DVI) for $40
my ESXi blog post with some good info nuggets - http://www.beejblog.com/2016/06/esxi-for-winmac-xamarin-ios-dev-nirvana.html

[ikosp]

Hello, please help me identify resistor.
I have MSI GeForce GTX 650 Ti Power Edition 1 GB https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/b333/msi-gtx-650-ti-power-edition-oc
Photo here
http://pctuning.tyden.cz/ilustrace3/Sulc/gtx650/foto/bezchladice_velky.jpg
http://pctuning.tyden.cz/ilustrace3/Sulc/gtx650/foto/zezadu_velky.jpg

Thanks for reply 

[Byteman]

I have EVGA 670GTX 4GB. I need quad buffer stereoscopy to use one ZSpace VR monitor. It is announced to work with Quadro based cards, so I need to modify my Geforce:

I guess I understand the hardware mod part soldering and removing some resistors. I even bought my resistors, ready to turn and burn the baby. However I've seen users talking about loading firmwares, modifying things in hex editors... Now I'm confused and have to feel confident about each step of this mod:

I wonder if loading some quadro firmware, bios etc. is necessary to achieve this mod? It would be wise if some genius wrote the entire operation step by step. At least keypoints.

It may be disappointing to solder everything and afterwards learn that some software hack is necessary.

I also appreciate an advice about converting to K5000 or K10 for my stereoscopy needs. K5000 seems to be the card of choice but K10 seems to have one less resistor modification which might be preferable if all other features are the same.


Thanks in advance.

[Gustavxerxes]

wow, comeback to this thread after 3 years makes me feel so nostalgic!  O0
I'm going to do a hardmoding with my GTX 750Ti (Quadro K2200 counterpart). Hopefully all the electrical engineer lessons and stuffs gained through the last 3 years could help me understand "this world" a bit more!    But before touching it, there are a couple of "million" questions that I wish to be enlighten 

• Can anyone give me a full instruction (or short hints) on how to track down these strap registers?
  
• Did anyone here successfully mod the Maxwell generation to their quadro counterpart?
  
• Can anyone provide me the high res picture of the quadro K2200 pcb?
  

Thanks for your help!     

I'll send you the picture in 2 days tops with the quadro K2200 pcb . I have a video card Asus GTX750Ti and I want to mod it to make a Quadro K2200 so be able to GPU Passthrought on my ESXi 5.5 server. without that mod, my VM Windows 7 not stop showing error 43.

My pc specs: ESXi 5.5 u2 on Core i5 4690, 8GB ram, ASRock Z97 Extreme6 with dual NIC support(onboard intel and realtek both gigabit) with Asus GTX750Ti https://www.asus.com/Graphics-Cards/GTX750TIOC2GD5/

LE: Pictures suck, i told the guy who sell this video card to make a better picture with the upper-right corner where the screw seems to have attached something, that's where resistors seems to be sticked on pcb; I'll post that picture when i get it. I'll post a picture soon with my gtx750ti also

Later later Edit: I uploaded more pictures..still the pictures are not good. I will get to a client who has this card in his workstation and i'll make some good quality pictures.

I also have a gtx 750 ti card but with 4gb of ram. I desoldered the nor EEPROM chip to reverse engineer the layout. Check the attached picture for what i found. My guess was that the resistors connected to pin 2 and 5 would be the strap resistors, however changing those had no effect on pci device id, only made it harder for ubuntu to boot with some values. Can anyone else shine some light on this ?


Edit:

I did some more testing, regardless of values i cannot get the last 2 nibbles of device id to change. The 750TI is has id 1380 and k2200 has 13ba, this is very similiar to the kepler based GTX680 (id 1180) and K5000 (id 11ba). My initial guess was that since we dont have to change the 2 first nibbles the mod should be the same as for the GTX680. Turns out that's probably not the case, since the card doesnt seem to boot with that mod 

My card is different in layout from the reference design, but the schematics should be the same. I also found some pictures of the reference 750TI and K2200 layout, and it seems that they both have resistors in the same place, which would not be the case if nvidia used the same system for the strap resistors with maxwell as they did on kepler, since the last nibble should be changed from a pull-down to a pull-up resistor i.e different footprint locations should be populated if they did.

Does anyone have a k2200 and a multimeter to meassure the strap resistors ?  I just need measurements from the relevant eeprom pins to gnd and vcc. The schematics in the attached picture is for my 4gb 750Ti

[bayx]

Hi to all,

i am new here. I read this thread from beginn to end and i have 2 questions about
GTX690. The member "gnif" is a genie (thx for your efforts) but after burn his card he dont share any
new picture with dual k5000 cpu´s.

My quetions:

1. Is dual K5000 possible?
2. Must i change the firmware or any hacks?

PS: I attached 2 pictures is this correct resistors for the GTX690

Sorry for my bad english

[monkers]

Hey Guys,

Has anyone had any luck getting the GTX Titan X to a M6000. Im setting up a 3D studio with a few guys we already have the bulk of our cpu grunt set up.

I would really like to run 4 M6000 cards with vGPU for the team. This hack would save me tonnes of cashola buy consolidating those resources. Would be happy to pass some of those saving onto the genius who cracks this egg.

we have enough background to follow some instructions to test on our cards if anyone has ideas.

Cheers.

[timofonic]

What about a laptop with Intel Core i7 5700HQ + Nvidia GeForce GTX960M over Optimus? Are there some possibility?