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Changing 8800gt into quadro fx 3700.

OK, that was interesting,,,the trust thing!
Check yer email.

G

ps-thanks for the bday wishes!
pss-missed the last line in the language!
 
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Well, through many troubles and the hope that securing myself a 9800 Gx2 GPU, would result in a better and easier outcome, I decided to do just that.

After two days of arguing and pleading my case about getting a FX5800 BIOS out of PNY, I received nothing. They seemed to be quite unwilling to work with me, I dont know whether if the BIOS file was top secret file or if they just didnt want me to corrupt my card, but in any case they refused to give it to me. Today I posted my GTX 280 for sale, or trade for a 9800 GX2, and surprisingly in twenty minutes I had a guy from a neighboring town comin to do the trade and did just that, so now I have a 9800 GX2, though I wasnt successful in turning it into a Quadro FX 4700 x2, I did work out all the kinks in flashing a card which has 2 GPUs and 3 BIOS file (1 for each of the GPU, and one for the SLI chip)... Yeah, kinda tricky, but I did edit a pair of BIOS files to as closly resemble a 4700 x2 but again its a card Nibitor doesnt yet support, but did mNage to succesfully flash both BIOSs and came out with a clean card... Whew... Though seeing as a 4700 x2 is two 3700s sammiched together, I may throw a 3700 BIOS ( a BIOS I can actually find, and that Nibitor supports) and flash them... The sli chip will hopefully take care of the SLI part of it... I will post results of my findings...
 
Sorry for rather dropping off the map here, new components arrived and I broke a waterblock. Its kept me amused for quite a while.

Any updates? Your last post is definitely an interesting one, I didn't realise there was a third bios on the chip. How do you specify where to flash to, is it still nvflash?

When you say come out with a clean card, was it one that worked as a quadro, or successfully getting back to where you started? I'm wondering if it's possible to sli two 8800gt flashed to fx3700. The 8800 supports sli, the 3700 doesn't. According to nvidia at least. I've got an sli motherboard board here at last, and if it doesn't work I've got four screens and folding madness so it's not all lost.


I really hope the lack of posts is losing faith that I'm reading this thread, and not that you've destroyed your graphics card


Finally got around to looking at the files you sent me. The 280 looks to be working fine, it thinks it's made by nvidia which is a touch odd but otherwise looks solid. The fx5800 one is a different size, and nibitor is not amused by it. It offers device id and so forth, but I don't trust them at all. Not at all sure where to find them outside of an fx5800 bios, which of course is rather hard to find. I think I'll give pny a go as well. Might be worth trying to find a retailer that sells it, go with the premise of wanting to review the bios prior to purchase. Should be possible to come up with some sensible reason
 
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I just got myself a second 9800GX2. Gonna mess around with quad SLI for a bit and then will probly give all this flashing to quadro a go. Will require some serious reading on my part to get the confidence to do it lol.
 
Well guys, sorry to give false hope, and otherwise about the 9800Gx2's but I talked with a expert called Mavke, and he's pretty sure it wont work... I think the shader count was different (last time I trust anything on wikipedia) thought I feel stupid for not doing my homework X( In the end I bought two of the 9800 GTs from my retailer, and Im pretty sure theyll do SLI, the guy known as AquaMac or something who made the FX3700 bios that we use, had screen shots of two "3700s" running in his Mac... So i would assume that it will be just fine in a PC environment.

As far as flashing a 9800Gx2 in nvflash youd have to type

"i1 -4 -5 -6 3700.rom". Then

"i2 -4 ect...
There might be a "-" before the i1 / i2 but Im not sure, mvktech has a forum topic on this about a guy flashing to a different companys bios, and Mavke helped again with this... So check it out... Other than that coupled with the idea that a flashed geforce card reading as a Quadro does NOT have the same performance as a real quadro, resistors would need to be mess with, some real hard modding... So when I get some money (potential PT government job Im in the running for) I'll get a real Geforce or FirePro ( the newest one looks really promising for the price for a top end product, though I do bleed green) coupled with a New 6-core proc (future Intel proc) and some other awesome goodies... Till then Ill live with a SLI faked 3700 setup... (SLI yet to come... Looking for a cheap SLI mobo)

-Maynard
 
Hey
I found your thread over at mkvtech, not a very optimistic response sadly. I'd hoped for success despite this, but thank you for sparing me trying the Gx2. I still have hope for the 280gtx

I've seen it stated that a modded card performs worse than a 'real' one. I've seen absolutely no proof of this, indeed I've not seen the modded benchmarked against the actual anywhere. Not surprising given how few people would have both. However the lower default clock speeds of the quadro, while prolonging life in hot cases, does not inspire confidence that they perform better when the hardware appears to be the same. I'm pretty certain my 750mhz modded 8800gt is quicker than a 'real' 600mhz fx3700.

I'm entirely with you on the last point, once working as an engineer rather than being a student I intend to assemble a ridiculous machine, probably tax deductable as a work expense. At least one of my friends will be a trained accountant by then, I'll work something out. However until that day, my modded 8800 is bottlenecked by my old processor and therefore probably not something to worry about. I'm hoping the i7 will prove much faster than it, so justifying sli

I'll stick with 8800gt, as they can have full cover ek blocks, and I've not seen any for the 9800. However I would be extremely interested if sli works for you, while I can think of no sensible reason why it wouldn't, the nvidia page does list the fx3700 as sli incompatible. The accidental change from P45 to X58 means I can play with sli at long last
 
Hey fellas, I'm glad to hear of your success with the 8800GT to quadros. I have two 8800 GTS (G92) that I would like to modify. Since this is really one of the only sites i've found that has reported success I have a few questions.

Since I have the later GTS with the G92 I can only go to FX3700 right? I couldn't go to the 4600 since it has a G80? I'm not too certain on the procedure so here's it to the best of my knowledge.

Open Nibitor and change the four digit identification code on the third tab. So in my case I would change the identification strap to "3700". Vendor strap to nvidia as well as the EVGA of my card to nvidia. Then set the card id to "fx 3700."

"Save bios to a bootable floppy disk with nvflash extracted to." I created my bootable floppy with nvflash and a copy of my backup bios so all I would have to do is drag and drop this new bios onto it?

Reboot, boot from floppy. Enter nvflash -5 -6 new.rom Is the "new.rom" whatever the bios was saved as or is it literally new.rom? Hit y, y. Reboot.

Uninstall drivers, reboot, snag quadro drivers off nvidia and install. Reboot.

Flash and transformation of 8800GTS to 3700 quadro complete. Repeat for second and put into SLI.

Sorry about the questions I'm just a bit apprehensive about this since it'll be my first flashing. Thanks for any input and advice!

Sorry I don't speak any Russian to put in a sweet message.
 
Hello mate, I will be thrilled to help.

First thoughts are that it's not going to change to the FX3700 as the 8800gts is different to the 8800gt. I shall see if I can find out what the equivalent is.

On any page, the top part has device and vendor as variables. Set device to the right quadro, and vendor to whatever you please. I left mine as evga

Under clock rates, set to whatever you want your card running at
Under adv. info is the most important part,

Device Id changes to that of the new card
Sub vendor id has to match the vendor, so set to 10DE if using nvidia, or do not change if leaving set to evga
Sub system ID does not change
Board ID does not change

The difficult step is working out which device id to use. So this is what will take the most of out time.

When you make the floppy disk, it'll have a load of files on it to start with. You add nvflash, another little file the name of which escapes me but it came with nvflash, and it's mentioned by name as missing if you try to flash without it. You then add your new bios file.

flash with nvflash -4 -5 -6 name.rom, y, y, reboot

Probably not needed but wise is to remove all geforce drivers before flashing, then install quadro drivers after the flashing is done. Otherwise the drivers fight with each other. Id personally do the cards seperately, one sitting outside the case while I flash its brother. Not required, and takes a bit longer (especially the driver uninstall with required reboot after each and every time), but safer and easier.

I'll head over to mkvtech. How much ram do your cards have? I'm going to assume 512, since I think the other sizes would mean G80

8800gts G92, 65nm, 754 million transistors, 135W, 128 shaders, 16 ROPs and 64 textures/clock, 256 bit gddr3

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Ah. There isn't an exact match. So, this is going to be breaking new ground. I propose you attempt to flash to 8800gt. If this is successful, everything is good and you can then flash to fx3700. If it's not successful, you're going to see all kinds of mad **** on your screen when you try to boot from it. So, here's what to do, complete with numbers. Don't suppose you have msn do you?

Take off the sli bridge, and then...

1/Copy the bios off your primary 8800gts, and off the secondary. Number them, and stick pvc tape over part of number 2. 88gtsstk1 and 88gtsstk2 for example. Flash the second one with the bios from the first, then swap the cards over and boot. Drivers shouldn't see a difference but might need a reinstall. This will work, and get you used to nvflash. You wont strictly need the -4 -5 -6 options but type them in anyway.

This is to give you two identical cards, so if all goes **** up you can flash the working one to the not currently working one.

2/Copy an 8800gt bios, a real one, not hacked about with, onto the floppy disk. Flash the primary graphics card with this (covered above somewhere, I think its a case of typing 1 or 2 near the start of the command. I'll read the helpfile if it's not obvious). I'll email you the appropriate one, it'll be at stock clocks if you don't specify otherwise. It'll call itself nvidia. You're welcome to source your own instead, the one I send will be a downclocked version of the 512 original from here, though I can dig out my old 8800gt evga bios if you like the nvidia is more likely to be compatible.

So now you have a known working 8800gts, and one card that thinks it's an 8800gt which may or may not work. Boot with the 8800gt in the primary slot, hope for clear screen and no corruption. I reckon a 70% chance of this being fine. if it's all buggered, turn off, swap the cards over, breathe a sign of relief at the post screen then flash the 8800gt back to the 8800gts bios. Swap cards back, boot, note all is back to normal. However we're then back to the drawing board and will need to be more cunning

3/So, hopefully it's now an 8800gt. Excellent. Remove geforece drivers now and reboot, then turn off and on next boot you flash it again, to fx3700 this time. Take the 8800gts out or the drivers are going to get really confused. Boot, install quadro drivers, verify all is well

4/Turn off, put the 8800gts in instead, flash to quadro, boot and notice that XP hasn't noticed a hardware change.

5/Put both in, boot. Check all good. Then turn off, put sli bridge on. And then we get to find out how to get sli working on these, maynard V has two fx3700 but no sli board, I have an sli board but only one card.


So, you get to do things people haven't before, offer a really useful piece of information to the public domain, and discover a distinct feeling of fear while waiting for it to post.

Please respond with any questions, the above is long and detailed only because I want to make very clear that this is done at no risk (the bonus of having a second card), should work, but may fail and leave you frustrated with the same sli system you have now
 
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Thanks for the help, I'll be glad to test out some new waters too. :p

I went over to Tech ARP to compare my 8800GTS 512 G92(D8P) and unless i'm not understanding something correctly it is very similar to the Quadro 3700 and what is listed as the Quadro FX x2. I'll list the specs I found in that respective order (GTS, 3700, 4600 x2)

Architecture: G92, NV92GL, NV92GL
Fabrication Proc: 65 nm, 65 nm, 65nm
Transistor Ct: 754 mil, 754 mil, 754 mil
Open GL Support: -- , 2.1, 2.1
Vertex Shaders: 128, 112, 128x2
Vertex Shader Version: 4.0, 4.0, 4.0
ROP's: 16, 16, 16x2
Textures/Clock: 64, Avg 56, Avg 64x2
Pixel Shaders: 128, 112, 128x2
Pixel Shader Version: 4.0, 4.0, 4.0
Core Speed: 650 MHz 1.625 GHz shaders, 500 MHz 1.25, 500 MHz 1.25
Geometry Rate: --, 250 MTriangles, 250 MTriangles
Texture Fill Rate: 41,600 MTexels/s, 28, 000 MTexels/s, 32,000 MTexels
Mem. Bus Width: 256 bits, 256 bits, 256 bits
Memory Type: GDDR3, GDDR3, GDDR3
Memory Speed: 972 MHz, 800 MHz, 800 MHz
Memory Bandwidth: 62.21 GB/s, 51.20 GB/s, 51.20 GH/s

Whew. That was fun to transfer. It is interesting how the GTS seems to have higher everything yet the Quadros are better for 3D applications. Must be the whole Open GL Support that they have.

So I'm not sure if I'm reading everything right but it seems like a 8800GTS 512 should go to a 3700. I'm not sure what the deal is with the Quadro FX 4700x2 but if I had to guess it seems like Nvidia used this GTS as the base model for it and the x2 denotes putting them into SLI? Hopefully i'm not misinterpreting something major since 2 4700's would rock.

Just wanted to check these stats with you since I figure best case scenario we don't have to flash to GT, might save a little work. IF not then I'll go ahead and try flashing to 'em. And I do have a Windowslive account which is MSN, correct?

Thanks for the help!
 
The dual gpu card was tried extensively above, it's a no go I'm afraid. It sounds like it should work but it just doesn't. And that was starting from a 9800x2, flashing two seperate cards to act like a dual gpu card... you don't have a hope.

Perhaps to clarify, the 9800gtx2 is not two 9800gt cards, it's one massive block with two cpus, two sets of ram, two normal bios and a third which controls the sli. Similarly the 4870x2 is not two 4870 cards.

Needless to say, it's
Textures/Clock: 64, Avg 56
Pixel Shaders: 128, 112,
Which I'm worried about. Quite simply I don't know enough about bios programming to guess if these matter or if one bios will run either number, or even though less likely if an 8800gt bios would just disable the extra shaders.

The performance difference is entirely in the drivers, geforce ones don't render in the right way for cad but quadro ones do. It's a big performance difference though, especially if you like maya.

I'm happy to email you a bios, but you're probably capable of taking the original 512mb one from rapidshare and turning the clocks down to match your card. I think all the steps posted above are required, and missing some out may end badly.
 
Ah ok. The Quadro FX 4700x2 is a card with two GPU's, like the new 295 I believe. And I have no idea how to configure the bios to read the two SLI'd as a single card with two GPU's. So that's a no go then on the 4700 as well since the single utilizes G80 and not my G92. What about that 3700 NV92GL? Or is that where the Vertex Shaders and Textures Clock come into play.

As far as the bios editing goes, something new to try, will I just be editing it to match the above listed settings of the 3700? OR was that in reference to changing the GTS into the GT.

Thanks for the posts, they are proving ever insightful.
 
At present the only editing I'm suggesting is turning the clock/memory/shader speeds on the original nvidia 8800gt bios up/down to match your card before flashing :)

Then flash one of them to 8800gt and then we'll know if you can have two fx3700s or not. I dont have an 8800gts, so can't test it myself. I reckon a 70% chance it'll flash to 8800gt with no problems, and a 30% chance it'll output mess to the screen on post and you get to swap your cards over and flash the 8800gt back to 8800gts
 
Hummmm.. I am still not convinced of this.. Yes you are changing the ident on the card from a 8800GT to a FX3700 but the performance scores you are comparing them to are your own. Yes you are gaining extra performance but are you getting actual FX3700 Performance?

Just for your reference these are ACTUAL FX3700 scores with Specviewperf.

Viewset Composite
1 thread Composite
2 thread Composite
4 thread
3dsmax-04 27.99 54.52 100.75
catia-02 38.86 64.35 85.68
maya-02 195.78 90.04 81.91
proe-04 37.64 36.34 38.42
sw-01 68.71 100.45 114.18
tcvis-01 26.60 24.14 23.48
 
Pretty sure this process does not achieve actual FX3700 performance, but considerably better than 8800GT performance - so for a sixth of the price, why not do it ?
 
Ok I think I get what you're doing. I looked at the 8800GT (G92) specs and saw that they were closer to the 3700 quadro set. So basically i'm flashing the GTS to GT so that it is a closer match and if successfully flashed they'll go to quadro.

If it doesn't flash to GT, I would be willing to try and flash it to the quadro anyways. I figure I have two, might as well try.

Plan on doing this after work. Updates then.
 
@Skyline what's the rest of the system that produces those scores, and what resolution? If you actually have one of these quadros I would love to be able to compare the modded with the real one.

I was processor limited as far as I can tell, in that more gpu clock did nothing and decreasing cpu clock hurt scores a lot. In time (hopefully not too long) I'll be able to offer a new set of figures from an overclocked i7.


What I'm basing my claim on are the tables from techarp which show the hardware to be the same, and that the cards are similar enough that crossflashing works. I'm yet to find someone who actually has one of these cards to give me some numbers to compare to, and £600 quid is a bit steep for me to sate my curiousity.

I am inclined to go further, and say that since my one is at 725 and the fx3700 ships at 600, mine should be quicker. I am more than happy to be proved wrong, and hose numbers may well do so. However without the rest of the system they were tested on, I just don't know
 
Just finished my overclock of my i7 920 actually. It is running a stable 4.0. Ran a 3DMarkVantage benchmark to get a base score. Any other benchmarks or programs that would be beneficial for the sake of comparison before I start heading to 3700's?

Good luck with your overclock!
 
Those scores were taken doing the runall 1280x1024 (Standard Comparison) on a Dual Xeon E5420. I think i still have a FX3700 in stock but will struggle getting a spec viewperf score in the next couple of days.. Will see what i can do.. :)
 
Here's what it looks like when I get to DOS:

2.jpg


I just tried it again and had a very scary result! When it rebooted, the monitor stayed blank . . . even after the boot! So with a black screen I typed in: nvflash -5 -6 current.rom and hit enter. I than hit y,y,y and it beeped when it was done flashing. I went ahead and rebooted and it came back . . THANK GOD!



omg, you must have been bricking it :D
 
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