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Graphics Card Tinkering

#1 Gatewaygeek

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Posted 02 May 2012 - 09:46 PM

I have an old Dell Latitude D620 and I had heard that the nVidia Quadro NVS 110m was very similar to that of the GeForce Go 7300.
I began to wonder if it would be possible to successfully flash the bios of the Quadro with a BIOS from the GeForce; or at a minimum, trick Windows 7 into thinking that the Quadro is a GeForce.
I know this is very risky, but this ol' laptop is on it's last legs anyways (Dead battery, bad inverter, couple keys missing, and an Ethernet port that intermittently works).

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it"
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work" Thomas Edison
"I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world." Thomas Edison
"Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something." Thomas Edison

#2 waldojim

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Posted 02 May 2012 - 10:37 PM

And what is the goal of such an endeavor? As it stands, there is a slight bias towards OpenGL based games, but no serious deficiencies.

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" -- Isaac Asimov

Spoiler

#3 Gatewaygeek

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Posted 02 May 2012 - 11:12 PM

The true goal is to try and get a GPU designed for workstation environments to perform like one designed more towards a gaming environment.
I'm just messing around with old hardware, and I want to see just how far I can push things. Plus, what I learn here can be used for later projects, etc.

#4 waldojim

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Posted 02 May 2012 - 11:30 PM

For the most part, the performance will be indistinguishable (less than 1%). Given the risk to the hardware, probably not worth it. You would get more performance overclocking than a new bios could net you. essentially, what you need is to soft0mod your card into the geforce equivalent and install the geforce drivers to prove this for yourself.
Follow these instructions, replacing the quadro ID with the geforce ID as needed:
http://www.techarp.c...rtno=539&pgno=2

Spoiler

#5 Gatewaygeek

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Posted 02 May 2012 - 11:41 PM

I was told that a Workstation GPU performs slower than a gaming one, but I'll take your advice
Ok then, where would I be able to find a decent program to overclock the GPU (The bios on this laptop doesn't have any settings that I could use to do so).

Edit: Would BFGMiner be a good program?
https://bitcointalk....p?topic=78192.0

This post has been edited by Gatewaygeek: 02 May 2012 - 11:50 PM