NVIDIA GeForce To Quadro Soft-Mod Guide

The NVIDIA Quadro family of professional graphics cards are very, very expensive. They are generally 2-5X more expensive than their gaming counterparts, the NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards. But everyone knows that Quadro and GeForce graphics cards are virtually identical in hardware.

Yes, you read that right. Even with the unbelievable price tag, the NVIDIA Quadro is really no different from their desktop GeForce counterparts. So why is NVIDIA charging you so much for a Quadro?

It all revolves around the driver support for professional 3D applications like 3ds Max or Maya. Quadro drivers allow the Quadro to be used to accelerate the rendering operations of such professional 3D applications while GeForce drivers do not. This is the basis for the premium prices NVIDIA (and ATI) charge for their professional-grade graphics cards.

Obviously, you cannot just use Quadro drivers with your GeForce graphics cards. After all, it represents the thin red line between a really, really fat profit margin and just a "normal" profit margin. NVIDIA Quadro drivers are designed to detect the presence of an NVIDIA Quadro graphics card. It will not install if a GeForce card is detected instead.

However, there is an easy way to soft-mod (modify in software) a NVIDIA GeForce desktop graphics card into a NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics card. We will show you just how to do it in this guide.

Before we start, you need to understand that soft-modding your GeForce card into a Quadro will not improve your graphics card's gaming performance in any way. All it does is enable hardware acceleration of professional 3D applications like 3ds Max and Maya...