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Changing 8800gt into quadro fx 3700.

Hey guys. I'm glad you kept a back up of the bios mate. It's pretty hard to kill one of these completely, but a defective bios will lead to loads of crap on the screen, or even worse, having to flash without any display at all.

There's a few things that need to be changed with nibitor. At the top of the first screen there is the manufacturer and the name of the card. Evga and fx 3700 works for me here, as does nvidia with fx 3700. Since evga don't make this card, I'm pretty sure its an identifier things like dxdiag use rather than what drivers look at.

So in more detail, and with screenshots at last, here's what to do. The top half has Device: Nvidia PCI-E 8800 GT or similar in it. Change this to Nvidia pci-e quadro fx3700
Next, change vendor to nvidia to be safe, or leave as your card manufacturer if you like. Not properly tested but made no difference to benchmarks.

Below this are the more exciting things. Clockrates are 675 / 1600 / 975 for the card the original guy used. On mine they're 650 / 1520 / 950 I believe, I'd suggest leaving them at whatever your 8800 is set to (until you overclock the fx 3700 :) )

Leave Voltages, Timings, Temperatures the hell alone

Under adv info (this is the main part)
Device ID 8800GT is 0611 but the FX3700 is 061A
The other three should be left alone, if using nvidia as vendor
10DE
053C
2301
are likely values

Evga has sub vendor ID of 3842 instead of 10DE

I presume sub system is the hardware identifier, device id is where the drivers look, and sub vendor id (which changes when you change the vendor at the top) is what software look at to identify your brand. This might matter with overclocking tools, evga precision might only work if the sub vendor id is 3842

Finally under boot settings, OEM signon, change GeForce 8800 GT VGA BIOS to Quadro FX 3700 VGA BIOS or whatever else takes your fancy.

As a summary, here
http://rapidshare.com/files/160384434/aquamac_Quadro_3700_Roms.zip
Are examples to work from. Change Device ID to 061A under adv info tab, and device to the fx3700 at the top. This (I believe) is sufficient by itself.

Here is four images of nibitor 5.0, showing the differences between the two bios's



I reckon that should do you. Sorry I've been away for a bit, life gets in the way of computers sometimes :)

p.s. that's exactly what dos should have looked like, I'm pretty sure your problem is the bios. Did you try just using the ones from rs? Worked for me out of the box, all the rest is me just trying to work backwards to find out what he did
 
I used the bios from rs and the one I made from Nibitor. I honestly think that what the deal is when you select FX3700, it automatically changes the Device ID from but it doesn't change the subsystem ID. If that was something that I had to change manually than I never did. But either way, both bios failed.

I wonder if me having the newest 8800GT (alpha dog edition) has anything to do with it. I have researched and found that people say if you this bios flash to use the 8800 GTS instead.

Nonetheless, I went ahead and shipped the cards back and should have my FX1800 with opengl 3.0 sometime this week.
 
Yeah, you definitely had to change one of the numbers manually. One changed with selecting the card manufacturer, but that isn't sufficient by itself. I'm sad to hear you had no success with it man. It doesn't look like the 3700 does sli, but they should have worked seperately. I'm using a factory overclocked evga card that's about 18 months old, so I doubt yours were that different. Any hope of you benchmarking the fx1800? Id love to know how it compares to my card.

Just finished a set of benchmarks after some mild overclocking. Quad core is now at 3.33ghz, so up by 500mhz over stock. The gfx card is now at 753/1876/1100 core/shader/mem.

8800gt stock
3dsmax-04 7.55
catia-02 7.92
ensight-03 14.49
maya-02 13.06
proe-04 6.35
sw-01 12.44
tcvis-01 2.78
ugnx-01 4.95

fx3700 650 mhz core
3dsmax-04 8.35
catia-02 9.61
ensight-03 15.13
maya-02 13.05
proe-04 6.57
sw-01 13.91
tcvis-01 3.18
ugnx-01 5.23

fx3700 750mhz core
3dsmax-04 15.48
catia-02 14.05
ensight-03 21.96
maya-02 42.11
proe-04 14.32
sw-01 29.01
tcvis-01 8.69
ugnx-01 6.24

Improvements are getting a bit ridiculous now. nx still the worst, going from 5 to 6 1/4 but maya goes from 13 fps up to 42. All done at 1600x1200 res. Numbers are sometimes hard to read, I'll produce graphs when I'm finished tweaking. Trying to get the gfx card to break 800mhz at present :)

edit: to clarify, my processor is definitely getting in the way of the card. Overclocking takes me bloody ages, but eventually I'll have sensible results. The plan is to get the processor stable at 3.8ish, card stable however high it'll go. Then several benchmarks at various speeds using both 8800gt and fx3700 drivers, probably using evga precision to find most of the data. Cheers for looking
 
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hey you guys,

i've managed to changed my Brand new XFX 8800 GT Alpha Dog to quadro using JonJ's instructions from this forum. i loaded the ready made .rom files for quadro that i got from here then i just changed the core, shader and memory to match my card's. then i also changed the vendor name to XFX, i thought it would make sense to match it with my card. and thats about it i flashed it using a floppy disk then next thing i know windows is reading it as quadro 3700, so i downloaded the drivers from nvidia website, installed it with no problems.

i mainly use Avid Media Composer and After Effects to edit my HD videos, i noticed that it didnt really boost the performance....i even thought that it went slower, with the geforce 8800gt seems quicker, i havent really benchmarked coz i dont know how to do it. does avid or after effects run quicker with a quadro? i also get slight flickering that wasnt there before when im playing back my videos on avid, im thinkin of flashing back to geforce, any advice?
 
what do you use to do benchmark tests, i wanna test after effects and avid media composer with the moded quadro then flash it back to 8800 gt then run the same test and see if im really gaining any performance at all

cheers
 
i returned my card after i tried flashing it back to 8800 gt. i was having flickering screens when im playing back my videos on Avid Media Composer, it also happened when i played games even though i flashed it back to 8800 gt. maybe the card got damaged at some point. i wasnt getting the flickering before i flashed it to quadro....
 
Id be astonished if just flashing it caused any problems. You're changing a couple of bits that identify the card to the os, that's all. I'm going to guess that you flashed it to higher speeds than stock, and your card was not stable at the elevated speeds.

Did you flash it back to the original bios, or to the downloaded one?
Both the modded and the normal ones are based on a factory overclocked card, there is no reason to assume your card would be stable at the higher speed.

I'm sorry to hear you haven't been successful though.
 
i exchanged the 8800 gt that i flashed with a new the same model 8800 gt coz i thought it was the card that's causing it but as soon as i plugged the new 8800 gt i get the same flickering screen when im loading heavy gpu processes like games and video editing. dunno why? which also means flashing it didnt really cause the flickering, i'll find out first whats causing the flickers then i'll flash it again to quadro

no jon i havent flashed it to higher speeds i just left followed the clock speed on my graphics card
 
Good fun. it's possible the 9800gt will work exactly as well as people say it's a bios modded 8800gt, but that's not certain. I'm considering picking up one as a spare as I foolishly failed to register my evga for their lifetime warranty
 
kilo8017 said:
hey you guys,

i've managed to changed my Brand new XFX 8800 GT Alpha Dog to quadro using JonJ's instructions from this forum. i loaded the ready made .rom files for quadro that i got from here then i just changed the core, shader and memory to match my card's. then i also changed the vendor name to XFX, i thought it would make sense to match it with my card. and thats about it i flashed it using a floppy disk then next thing i know windows is reading it as quadro 3700, so i downloaded the drivers from nvidia website, installed it with no problems.
Click to expand...

Hi,
I would like to do the same thing with my XFX 8800 GT Alpha Dog (Ref : PV-T88P-YHF4). What is the ref of your graphic card ? See >>> http://www.xfxforce.com/en-us/products/graphiccards/8series/8800GT Alpha Dog.aspx
Could you send me the values for core, shader and memory ?
Have you still no problem with your new Quadro FX 3700 ?

Thanks a lot,
Arnaud (I'm french, sorry for my bad english...)
 
This works!

Well guys, this definitely works.

I bought a cheap second hand MSI 8800GT and played with Nibitor and BIOS.

MSI card is this one, in case you want to know exactly:
NX8800GT-T2D512E-OC, version 3, V117
http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=proddesc&maincat_no=130&cat2_no=136&prod_no=1343#

What I did, in case people want to know:

1. Got Nibitor 5.0 and MSI card nstalled in Vista (Nibitor did not work properly in Windows7)

2. Backed up the BIOS of MSI card
3. Changed the BIOS features, to Nvidia and Quadro FX3700. (Did not touch sybsystem ID)
4. Flashed the BIOS to the card. Flash worked, but Windows still recognized the card as 8800GT. Not happy with that.
5. Changed the BIOS features, to Nvidia, Quadro FX3700 and changed the sybsystem ID to the one from BIOS from the zip first post.
6. Flashed the BIOS to the card. Flash worked, but Windows still recognized the card as 8800GT. Not happy with that.

7. Well, I took the Quadro FX 3700 BIOS from the first post (rapidshare link) and customized it to MSI 8800GT options. I changed the frequencies to the ones of my MSI card, I changed the temperature setting to the ones of my card and saved the new BIOS.

8. Flashed the BIOS to the card. Flash worked, and guess what! It worked, Windows recognized the card as Quadro FX3700.I installed the new Quadro drivers from Nvidia website fine!

Now, small issue, please help if you know how to fix this one:

I tried to install the Advanced Performance driver for AutoCAD 2010 and it says I don’t have a Quadro card??

Windows recognizes it, Quadro drivers are installed and working AutoCAD is recognizing the card as “certified” the only issue is the Advanced Performance driver will not install?

Did not get time to do benchmarks, it was late when I finished I’ll do it over the weekend if there is interest.
 
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And what about GeForce GTX 280 to Quadro FX 4800 ?

ehsad said:
Well guys, this definitely works.

I bought a cheap second hand MSI 8800GT and played with Nibitor and BIOS.

MSI card is this one, in case you want to know exactly:
NX8800GT-T2D512E-OC, version 3, V117
http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=proddesc&maincat_no=130&cat2_no=136&prod_no=1343#

What I did, in case people want to know:

1. Got Nibitor 5.0 and MSI card nstalled in Vista (Nibitor did not work properly in Windows7)

2. Backed up the BIOS of MSI card
3. Changed the BIOS features, to Nvidia and Quadro FX3700. (Did not touch sybsystem ID)
4. Flashed the BIOS to the card. Flash worked, but Windows still recognized the card as 8800GT. Not happy with that.
5. Changed the BIOS features, to Nvidia, Quadro FX3700 and changed the sybsystem ID to the one from BIOS from the zip first post.
6. Flashed the BIOS to the card. Flash worked, but Windows still recognized the card as 8800GT. Not happy with that.

7. Well, I took the Quadro FX 3700 BIOS from the first post (rapidshare link) and customized it to MSI 8800GT options. I changed the frequencies to the ones of my MSI card, I changed the temperature setting to the ones of my card and saved the new BIOS.

8. Flashed the BIOS to the card. Flash worked, and guess what! It worked, Windows recognized the card as Quadro FX3700.I installed the new Quadro drivers from Nvidia website fine!

Now, small issue, please help if you know how to fix this one:

I tried to install the Advanced Performance driver for AutoCAD 2010 and it says I don’t have a Quadro card??

Windows recognizes it, Quadro drivers are installed and working AutoCAD is recognizing the card as “certified” the only issue is the Advanced Performance driver will not install?

Did not get time to do benchmarks, it was late when I finished I’ll do it over the weekend if there is interest.
Click to expand...

Do you think it's possible to do the same thing with latest Nvidia GTX to Quadro FX ?
Thanks for your help.
 
I've just managed to get my 8800gt g92 card running as an fx3700. Like a few here the first flashes just left me looking at a black screen, but it wasn't too hard to find out why.

The first bit of info i found was that the fx bios i was using had a completely different fan setup to my gt bios. The fx was set to start with the fan at 20% of full power, and not really kicking in untill the chip hit 70c......and not getting to full power untill the gpu was around 120c. That just meant that the card overheated within seconds of starting. (Nibitor->Temperature tab->Fanspeed IC)


The problem I now have is the memory speed. I've got the shader@1500 and the core@600 (both stock), but the comp locks solid if I set the memory higher than 510 (from 900 stock)......any ideas why? Overheating doesn't seem to be the culprit (gpu around 50, gpu memory around 45 and gpu ambient 37'ish).
 
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By 510 do you mean 1510? I didn't think it was possible to slow the memory down to 500mhz.

Thanks for the heads up on fan control, my card's under water so I didn't notice this.

You cannot do this with the latest nvidia cards, at least not yet. The most recent quadro card released is almost identical to a 280gtx, except with 4gb of ram. Anything newer than this hasn't been released in the professional range yet. As soon as I find the spare funds lying around I'm going to get a 280 and try this, but as the fx3700 appears to be bottlenecked by my processor I'm in no rush.

With regards autocad, did you remove all the nvidia drivers and reboot before installing the quadro drivers? I've definitely had issues with this. I'm now on a hybrid sli board which cheerfully lets me install either set of drivers then misbehaves if I use the geforce ones by mistake.

Glad to see this thread is alive and other people are having success. The subsystem ID is definitely important, the branding of the card doesn't seem to be. Mine still identifies as evga despite evga not making quadro cards :)

p.s. I believe its possible to overvolt these cards, but I haven't done so yet. Mine is very nearly stable at 750 core but fails folding at home, so I'm thinking a small voltage increase is the answer
 
This is of definite interest to me. Im gonna have to have a read when Im more awake and see if I want to give it a go.
shame OcUK doesnt appear to have any 8800GT's in atm.
wonder what it would make of my 9800GX2 lol.
 
BIGBC said:
This is of definite interest to me. Im gonna have to have a read when Im more awake and see if I want to give it a go.
shame OcUK doesnt appear to have any 8800GT's in atm.
wonder what it would make of my 9800GX2 lol.
Click to expand...

They have 1 in stock now (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BG-053-LT). B Grade but should be fine for purpose.

If anyone does buy it and is successful in flashing please let me know!
 
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