Pro's and Con's of Quadro4 700 gl for Gaming...............

[311Sam]

Hello There,
I have an Inspiron 8200 laptop and the fastest video card they have for it is the nvidia quadro4 700 go gl. I currently have a geforce4 440 go in it but it is starting to lag in "todays" games. The last card that dell made that will fit the inspiron is the quadro4 700 and since they just launched there new line of inspiron 8500's im sure they wont be making any new cards for the i8200's. My question is about how good is this quadro card for gaming? Its based on the nv28 core like the geforce ti4200 so im sure performance will be similar. I have heard that these profesional cards are not made for gaming and that they will lock up alot if used for games. But then i heard that all quadro's are just geforces with extra features and stuff and they are fine for gaming. And also i read that some games dont support profesional cards and so they wont work at all with them. If you have any info on using quadro vid cards for gaming or if you have had any experiences with these cards then please give me some info. I just dont want to spend $300 on a video card and then be disappointed with it or even worse not be able to use it for games.

Thank you for your time and information,

Sam

[iNeb]

AFAIK it's used for graphic workstations, not sure about games...

[311Sam]

Yes i understand its for workstations. The only thing i care about though is:
A. is it faster then my current video card
&
B. will it play games reliably and without glitching and locking up

[JayMan]

Hi, i don't really know much about the mobile chips, but if it is indeed based on a ti4200 it should be faster than the gf4 go 440 (which is based on the mx i think).

As far as ability for gaming, i have no idea...

I'm sure RobRich should be able to answer the questions tho... Now we just need to catch his attention....

JayMan

[311Sam]

All of the mobile versions of the laptop cards are the same as their desktop brothers. They're just shaped different and clocked lower....but coolbits fixes that
Dont know who RobRich is though....

[eagle1]

I wouldn't know how to answer this but usually the Quadros are made for open gl applications and graphic intensive ones. They ALWAYS suck on games because those are not their primary purpose.

If the mobile chip is as fast as the normal card (sometimes they lower the clock settings and a bunch of stuff to keep heat levels down) then you can expect something like this:

http://www.cadalyst.com/reviews/hard...02gc/index.htm

[goldenbuddha]

what eagle1 said, and also this... their Direct3D support for those cards are below those of your current card, and most games are d3d nowadays.

So the bottom line is, they are faster than your current chip, but not for the reasons you'd like........ unless you use 3D apps.(not games)

[311Sam]

Thank you for the info. I have been readin tons of info on the differences between the cards. Incompatiblity with DX was a concern with me but apperently the 700 gl supports all the way up to dx8. I found a couple of people on the dell forums that have used the quadros for gaming. One guy upgraded (or downgraded) from a geforce4 440 to a quadro 500 gl and he said that his 3dmark2001se score only dropped by 30 and that his fps in GTA actually went up from 30 to 45. He didnt say about any other games though. There's another guy that has a quadro 700 go gl and he gets a 3dmark2001se score of almost 9000 and a 3dmark2003 score of like 1100 and thats just on stock clocks. Thats way better then my scores of 5400/500. I'm just trying to find out how good these cards hold up to extended gaming. Like if they will blue screen or lock up. It seems that the reason that these cards run slower in gaming is because they have features enabled to increase gfx quality, if there was just some way to turn these "features" off....

Here are some quadro spec links:
http://www.nvidia.com/docs/lo/1624/S..._XGL_11-02.pdf

http://www.nvidia.com/docs/lo/1755/S...o_LineCard.pdf

[RobRich]

Dont know who RobRich is though....

Hang around long enough, you will.

As to the professional versus gaming card debate, it really is a null issue for nVidia products. However, if you want to game on a 3DLabs Wildcat card, good luck unless it is a P9 chipset model.

The Quadro shares EXACTLY the same DX software converntions as the GeForce. The primary difference for the Quadro is enabled software features for improved OpenGL support, such as line antialiasing. The GF-4 and FX Quadros have minor hardware differences, but none that would matter for those interested in gaming.

Games running on a Quadro generally operate within a 5% tolorance as compared to its GeForce counterpart, assuming both have similar clock rates. As to frequency scalling, desktop Quadro cards are often times clocked slightly higher than GeForce models. As to mobile chipsets, both series have slower clock rates than dekstop models due to power saving concerns and increased profits through the sale of OEM chips that would have otherwise not passed retail speen binning. However, the differece is usually negigable, as most mobile GF chips perform within 10-15% of its desktop sibling. Like that really makes a difference when gaming at 100 frames per second anyway.

As to concerns about game compatibility with the Quadro, there are absolutely none. Actually, I use an old GF-2 Quadro GTS for gaming all the time. On an interesting note, my Quadro is just a hacked GF-2, so that should show you there is little difference between the architectures.

What you are really paying for with the Quadro is driver development and 3rd party certification for key professional applications.

The Quadro FX will be the first real departure from the GeForce line, as it features 12-bit rendering accuracy, though the desktop model does not. It is unclear at this time whether this option can be enabled through the standard PCI_ID hack that most people use to convert GF cards to Quadro models. If nVidia is smart, it will be a hardwired function, and I certainly mean something stronger than setting a hardware register value within the chipsets core as that can be probably be overcome by intercepting the driver initialization routines or re-writing the string of the card's register memory offset value with something similar to H.Oda's WPCRSET for motherboard chipsets during initialization of Windows hardware abstraction layer.

Catch ya' later,
Robert Richmond

[sechs]

I'm not familiar with the particular model you have, but it's fairly unusual to be able to easily change the graphics chip in a laptop.

Nonetheless, if you feel the need, you should be able to easily convert a Quadro to its comparable Geforce sibling via driver changes.

[RobRich]

Thanks sechs, missed that part about being a notebook. Perhaps he intends to buy a new model?

311, changing notebook graphics chips is really not possible for most models. If you are truly interested, do you know anything about SMT soldering or hardware engineering?

[311Sam]

RobRich, thank you for the info and for spending your time to type all that. The dell inspiron 8000,8100,8200 and the dell precision m50 and the latitude c480 (i think its c480..) all have the same video card configuration. They just released the new inspiron 8500 this week and it is a totaly different format from the previous ones which is why us i8200 owners are now screwed. The quadro 700 gl card currently comes in the "mobile workstation" precision M50. To get a new video card or any part you just have to simply have the part number and then you just call up dell spare parts. The video card itself basicaly has its own mini-agp port that it plugs into on the motherboard so a video upgrade is quite easy ( http://support.ap.dell.com/docs/syst...ve.htm#1084976 ) For the last 3 days as soon as i get home at 3 o'clock i sit in front of this screen digging out stuff about the quadro cards till bed time. I've been diggin though the web today since 3:30pm....it is now 4am and im tired . I think some of the best information on the quadro cards came from the nvidia site. So why do you want to know what i know about smt soldering? Are you talking about the resistor mod for these cards? I wouldnt mind doing that but im not sure if the resistors in the mobile card are numbered the same. So now i know that the quadro can be used for gaming, now i just got to figure out how to optimize it for performance. I saw some options in rivatuner that said something about disabling the "professional" options in quadro cards. I would like to figure out how to disable the hardware antialised points and lines since that seems to be what kills the performance in the these cards....or at least thats what a nvidia quadro pdf said, not sure if its a option it the driver or in rivatuner. Any one know that one?

Man I'm tired, thanks for the info and nighty night,
Sam

[eagle1]

Well.. now you know who RobRich is!!! lol

[RobRich]

Nice to see you have an upgradable model, as most notebooks are not. Accordingly, you can disregard the soldering comment.

You do not have to worry about disabling the advanced rendering options for OpenGL. Most applications will only invoke the options if actually needed. I know of no games that actually support features like hardware line anti-aliasing. I play OGL games like UT and Q3 with no performance probs with my Quadro GTS.

Still, if you must, RivaTuner can disable most Quadro OpenGL options. You can check out RivaTuner with your current GeForce card, so download it and give it a go. Actually, you may want to tweak out your current card, as RT can oftentimes give a nice little performance boost for many popular games.

Good Luck,
Robert Richmond

[jamie macbryde]

i'm in a similar position to sam. inspiron 8200 GF4 440 go.
My question. is it posible to hack the GF4 into a quadro via a pci id hack?(like how rob rich described) and if so how?
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