GeForce vs. Quadro
I will be starting my studies in architecture at U of T this coming fall. I've always been into computers, and I currently work as a computer technician, so the computer that I use for school is going to be badass. I don't want to wait for things to render and I don't want a crappy machine to have any impact on my grades. A better rendering means higher grades and happy clients in the future.
The CPU will be a Quad Core Intel. Lots of RAM. Two 24" monitors. But what about the video card? I'm going with an nVidia card. The GeForce cards are super cheap. The best of the best can be bought for under $500. A very good one can be bought for $250. And then there's the Quadro professional cards. With the FX3700 at around $800 and the FX5600 at around $3000.
I was shocked to find out the prices for the Quadro cards and started doing some research. Both Quadro and GeForce cards have the same chips. What makes them different is the drivers. Since there's lots of gamers out there, the GeForce cards sell more, so it does not cost much money to fund a team to gear these drivers for gamers. But because of the small amount of Quadro cards sold, nVidia needs to spend more money on tweaking drivers. GeForce users report glitches when using CAD programs. At times even programs crashing. But Quadro cards are tested specifically so that they are solid. Obviously, they are not so good at running games.
So it's settled, I need a Quadro. But I also have a budget. If I had more funds, I would buy one of these or these or choose from a long list of companies offering high performance machines. But I am building my own PC with limited funds, so I was looking for a way to trick my PC into thinking that there's a Quadro card in there. Luckily people have been doing this for a while now and there's a really good and popular How-To on TechARP.
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=539&pgno=0
Ethics: I'm not sure if consumers are allowed to do this. But to me, this is very much like pirating software. Students and enthusiasts usually cannot afford to pay hundreds and sometimes thousands for software and hardware. Usually there are student or evaluation editions for software. But there's no such thing for hardware. And if a student is savvy enough they will put up with the headache of "soft-modding" their video card. Once out of school and in the professional world, then these actions are no longer acceptable. If you're making money and are using these programs then you should pay for them. Same goes for the hardware.
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