Soft-modded video cards for archicad...cheaper alternative?

[ICEdevil]

does anyone know if a software-modded card (altering the driver for a gaming card unlocks it as a professional card) would perform well in archicad?

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=539&pgno=1


anyone tried this or ever heard of anyone trying?

[henrypootel]

The benefits of an actual Quadro are the reason you would want one(ie. better quality chip, support from the manufacturer. Both things that you won't get from softmodding) not because they are faster.
The reason you see good performance figures from people softmodding their cards is that the programs used to benchmark them(C4D, 3DS etc..) are using extensions that are specific to the Quadro drivers. At this stage, ArchiCAD does not use any of these, so your performance gain would be Nil.
Possibly it might even run slower, because you need to run an older version driver(162.25).

[vistasp]

ICEdevil, have a look at this wiki page - especially the part about professional v/s gaming cards.

[ICEdevil]

henrypootel wrote:
The benefits of an actual Quadro are the reason you would want one(ie. better quality chip, support from the manufacturer. Both things that you won't get from softmodding) not because they are faster.

if you refer to support from the manufacturer...meaning customer support?... i wouldn' pay 500EUR more for that...

henrypootel wrote:
The reason you see good performance figures from people softmodding their cards is that the programs used to benchmark them(C4D, 3DS etc..) are using extensions that are specific to the Quadro drivers. At this stage, ArchiCAD does not use any of these, so your performance gain would be Nil.
Possibly it might even run slower, because you need to run an older version driver(162.25).

now i have to ask you to please be more explicit, as i don't know what exactly extensions are, and why archicad doesn't have them...

but all in all, your answer pretty much convinced me

[ICEdevil]

vistasp wrote:
ICEdevil, have a look at this wiki page - especially the part about professional v/s gaming cards.

already checked that page out...thanx anyway... 😉

[henrypootel]

By support, I mean customer support as well as the fact that Graphisoft get developer-level support from nVidia for the Quadro line of cards. So if ArchiCAD has issues with a card, nVidia will work with them to fix it in the drivers or whatever is necessary. They will not do this for GeForce cards.
Also, from the quadro wikipedia page:

Many of these cards use the same chipset as the game- and action-oriented GeForce video cards by NVIDIA. Those cards that are identical to the desktop cards can be "soft-modded" to identify itself as the equivalent Quadro card and this allows optimized drivers intended for the Quadro cards to be installed on the system. While this will not offer anywhere near the performance of the equivalent Quadro card it can improve performance in certain applications.

The difference comes in the firmware controlling the card. Given the importance of speed in a game, a system used for gaming can shut down textures, shading, or rendering after only approximating a final output—in order to keep the overall frame rate high. The algorithms on a CAD-oriented card tend rather to complete all rendering operations, even if that introduces delays or variations in the timing.

[ICEdevil]

henrypootel wrote:
By support, I mean customer support as well as the fact that Graphisoft get developer-level support from nVidia for the Quadro line of cards. So if ArchiCAD has issues with a card, nVidia will work with them to fix it in the drivers or whatever is necessary. They will not do this for GeForce cards.
Also, from the quadro wikipedia page:

Many of these cards use the same chipset as the game- and action-oriented GeForce video cards by NVIDIA. Those cards that are identical to the desktop cards can be "soft-modded" to identify itself as the equivalent Quadro card and this allows optimized drivers intended for the Quadro cards to be installed on the system. While this will not offer anywhere near the performance of the equivalent Quadro card it can improve performance in certain applications.

The difference comes in the firmware controlling the card. Given the importance of speed in a game, a system used for gaming can shut down textures, shading, or rendering after only approximating a final output—in order to keep the overall frame rate high. The algorithms on a CAD-oriented card tend rather to complete all rendering operations, even if that introduces delays or variations in the timing.

i understand now...

about the support...do you know if nvidia or ati have a driver specially created for ArchiCAD like they have for AutoCAD or 3DSmax?

and...what card would you reccomend for 3-400EUR max?

[Laszlo Nagy]

No, there are no such specialized drivers for ArchiCAD.

[ICEdevil]

laszlonagy wrote:
No, there are no such specialized drivers for ArchiCAD.

thanx...but...wouldn't that be...like...really useful?

[Laszlo Nagy]

Well, I dont know about this tchnologically.
But I do know that currently you do not have to have to most high end graphics card and ArchiCAD will show very nice 3D performance even with very large project files, as far as I know.
I suppose the performance of graphics card is so great these days that there may not be any need for specialized drivers.
Anybody tell me if my thinking is incorrect.