[MOVED] Hacking NVidia Cards into their Professional Counterparts

[meehow_g]

Thanks for answer!!! Unfortunately atm I have only a photo with cooler attached. Can take more photos on monday.

[mihaii]

What would be a good card (performance / price / consumption ratio) ?

can the GT 630 be modded? (GF108) ?
Or the Maxwell GTX 750?

[gordan]

FYI all - recent QEMU has added patches that prevent the Nvidia driver from detecting it is running in a VM (no-snoop and CPU ID). I am currently running completely unmodified GT630 cards with KVM on my prototype rig. The same patches will probably make it into Xen soon, so that should be working with unmodified cards, too, if it doesn't already.

Doesn't help with ESXi, though, if that's your preference.

[mihaii]

Good news

I need the Quadro for the Nview.
Some time ago, Nvidia decided that the Nview should only be available just on Quadro cards and blocked the installation on Geforce

[mihaii]

I purchased an Asus GT 630
Can somebody help localizing the smd that need to be replaced?

I uploaded the hi-res pictures here
http://www.mihaii.ro/quadro/


Thanks,
Mihai

[jhm]

I've been reading through this forum enough to establish that hacking a NVidia Card is beyond my skill set.

I am a photographer working with stills and video. My main motivation for hacking a Geforce to a Quadro would be to enable 10-bit video output. I'd like to do it on a powerful enough card to enable awesome GPU acceleration and a bit of future proofing.  Lots of vram would seem to be useful for 4k video work.

Does anyone know of any commercial services that can mod cards on behalf of clients?  Or even if there is someone out there who has performed a mod successfully and would feel confident in performing another. I was thinking of getting a k6000 out of a reasonably powerful 4-6gb card.

[joe500]

Hello, i moded my GTX 770 now to a K5000 and changed the deveice ID in the bios. Still no luck. I can passthrough the card in esxi no problem, but when I install
the nvidia drivers all the vm won't start anymore. Is there a way to edit the ram size of an original k5000 bios so I can flash it on the moded 770?
If anybody has successfully moded a gtx to a k5000 and was able to use vdga please give me some tips to solve that problem.

[gordan]

RAM size modifications have been achieved in the past through reverse engineering the RAM init blob part of the BIOS. The info is somewhere in this thread, probably about 2/3 of the way through.

Various people on this thread successfully used the Fermi (4xx) series cards modified to Quadros with ESXi without problems.
I have myself used them on Xen.

Nowdays I'm using KVM which has patches in places to neuter the driver's ability to tell it's running in a VM, so there is no longer any need to modify the cards. Unfortunately, things are not as easy if you have to use closed source software.

[joe500]

thanks for the reply gordan Maybe I'm better of with just buying a 4gb version and than flash a k5000 original bios on it. That should make the card a "real" K5000 right as they have exactly the same specs except of the dma engine.

[mosmo]

I'm hoping either to mod the titan x or passthrough the new amd 390 series in ESXi. My modded titan black is enuf for the current games atm though.

[gordan]

Flashing a K5000 BIOS onto a modified 4GB 680/770 will not provide all of the K5000 features - SPECviewperf scores will still be lower and the ECC capability still won't work (even though it will show up in the control panel.

IMO, KVM without modifying the cards is the way forward.

[proteus7]

So this may sound like a crazy question..I need to reverse hack.
Is there any way I can mod (via bios flash or otherwise) a pair of  K6000 into Titan Black (or GTX 780), that I can then SLI for gaming purposes? Apparently the Quadro cards do not have SLI enabled, except in special systems. No, I can't trade, or sell these cards, which would be the obvious solution, but I would like to just use them for gaming.
Thanks!

[gordan]

I didn't think K6000 had SLI connectors.

You could try DifferentSLI modified drivers (you may need to see what they did and modify the driver to include K6000 SLI enablement).

[th14g0]

So this may sound like a crazy question..I need to reverse hack.
Is there any way I can mod (via bios flash or otherwise) a pair of  K6000 into Titan Black (or GTX 780), that I can then SLI for gaming purposes? Apparently the Quadro cards do not have SLI enabled, except in special systems. No, I can't trade, or sell these cards, which would be the obvious solution, but I would like to just use them for gaming.
Thanks!

I need that too.
I have a Quadro K6000 that I want to use to play games. Is there something that I can do to improve performance? Modified driver, bios upgrade ?


English is not my primary language.. sorry about that !


thanks in advance

[gordan]

Have you tried using EVGA Precision-X or MSI Afterburner to adjust the clock speeds at runtime? Does that work on Quadros?

[th14g0]

Have you tried using EVGA Precision-X or MSI Afterburner to adjust the clock speeds at runtime? Does that work on Quadros?

No, i did'nt try yet.
If it works, do you know what values should I change?

[proteus7]

Other issue is that Quadro cards apparently can't be SLI'd, unless its a Dell, HP or Lenovo workstation? while  the comparable  non-quadro models can be.

[gordan]

I'm not sure Qadros can be SLI-ed regardless of the machine they are in - they have no SLI connectors.
But if it really is dependant on the drivers checking for specific hardware, you might be able to fake the relevant hardware by using a VM and telling QEMU to present specific SMBIOS options that identify it as the machine on which SLI should be enabled by the driver.

[elgonzo]

I'm not sure Qadros can be SLI-ed regardless of the machine they are in - they have no SLI connectors.

Some Quadros have SLI connectors, some don't. Rule of thumb: usually low-end / entry- to mid-level Quadros don't have SLI connectors, high(er) end Quadros do...

Other issue is that Quadro cards apparently can't be SLI'd, unless its a Dell, HP or Lenovo workstation? while  the comparable  non-quadro models can be.

A list of workstations enabled for Quadro SLI can be found at the Nvidia website (not sure how often that list is updated, though).
Noteworthy is the very first statement above the list: "Only the systems listed below are Quadro SLI Certified. To maintain Quadro premium quality standards, a system cannot be configured as a Quadro SLI-enabled unless it has gone through and passed NVIDIA testing."

[gordan]

All that means is that those integrators paid Nvidia a big fat fee to certify their workstations. If you can get a full SMBIOS dump from one of those machines, you can probably fire up a KVM VM using QEMU with the relevant SMBIOS payload and it would just work.

Nvidia is well known for this kind of blocking in the drivers - they did similar things to block GeForce cards working in VMs, that was kind of why this thread started.

[elgonzo]

All that means is that those integrators paid Nvidia a big fat fee to certify their workstations. If you can get a full SMBIOS dump from one of those machines, you can probably fire up a KVM VM using QEMU with the relevant SMBIOS payload and it would just work.

Nvidia is well known for this kind of blocking in the drivers - they did similar things to block GeForce cards working in VMs, that was kind of why this thread started.

With regard to SLI you are wrong. Nvidia might be an "evil" company (they did ample of things to deserve this label, but you could say the same about probably any other company of sufficient size), but Quadro SLI certification has a serious background. It really is about protecting the brand reputation and thus protecting business opportunities and margins. It's not about earning money through certification fees...

Quadros in SLI configurations will often been used in numbers to power big (stereoscopic) multi-projection walls, CAVEs and similar installations, where targets for both performance as well as visual quality have to be met (performance especially crucial with regard to stereoscopic installations). Such installations cost big money (easily in the 6 digits, for stereoscopic CAVE installations far beyond 1Mio US$), and if something does not work as advertised/promised/demonstrated to the customer, all hell breaks loose...

Manufacturers of such certified workstations are almost always directly or indirectly involved in such installations (you know, big money, reputation...) and, when problems arise and the shit hits the fan, are usually able and willing to not only provide technical support via phone, but often also send technical support personnel.

Allowing such installations to be made out of random components opens up the risk for all sorts of problems with those installations, which for any technical support guy will be nigh impossible to fix in acceptable time due to the random nature of the chosen hardware configuration. How would you avoid such risk? Simple, make sure that random hardware configurations cannot happen... From the perspective of a "little" customer this might be hard to understand, but think of it like this: Big boys play with big toys, and when the toy is making trouble, then big boy gets very angry. Better make big boy not angry, otherwise you will get a bloody nose...

[jhm]

I'm wondering does the recent release of the Quadro M6000 open the door for modding cards such as the GTX  960?

[SoNic67]

M6000 has the same chipset as GTX Titan X (GM200). Not even close to GTX 960 (GM206)...

[mosmo]

Can someone please provide me with a Titan X and Quadro M6000 BIOS ? I want to have a go at modding the X to the 6000 but want to compare the BIOS files first.

thanks.

[th14g0]

I would like to exchange my Nvidia Quadro K6000 by a Titan X..