GTX960M to Quadro

Hi, i just bought an Acer aspire v15 nitro, i'm really satisfied with its performances in gaming, but, as i do some cad work sometimes, i would need better performaces on that scenario too.
I found some really old topic discussing this kind of transformation, but nothing new about 9xx graphic cards.
My question is: is it possible to SOFT hack the graphic card by installing quadro drivers in some way that doesn't involve messing with hardware stuff?
I don't need paticular features of quadro cards, the only important thing is being able to fully take advantage of this graphic card when using cad software, because at the moment it looks slower than my OLD hd5470, that is absolutely unacceptable...

Thank you very much

 

Does the 960M even have a quadro counterpart? I know that only flagship models had Quadro Counterparts, in my case the 680M had the K5000M as a counterpart.
Somewhere I read that AMD cards generally have better direct compute performance than nvidia, as nvidia cripples their GTX cards artificially in this regard to make Quadro cards have a market. AMD also has the FirePro series, but does not cripple its "gaming" cards as much. Therefore I am not surprised that the 960M does not fare better in e.g. CAD...

Yet, yes, you can mod quadro drivers to install on your 960M notebook. You have to modify the .inf for that, though, unless you can find a quadro driver that already comes with a modified .inf e.g. this one. Post #2 has the modified .inf.

 

Thank you very much.
I know that quadro m2000m has the same specification (same number of cores, same clock, memory speed and size ecc), but i don't know if it is its counterpart. Is there a good way to discover it?

When i bought this pc i knew that Nvidia does this kind of things, but i really didn't expected the 960m to be slower than a low end 2010 gracphic card with 80 cores clocked at 750mhz...

However is there eventually a good guide on how to mod .inf driver files?

This kind of mod can be removed simply uninstalling the drivers right? (i kinda know this, but i don't want to take any risk on a new pc).

Thank you again

 

You could follow my own guide, thing is it referrs to Windows 7. For W10 there is almost no difference though, but you have to disable driver signature enforcement. Find it towards the end of the first post (OP).

To quote myself from a few days ago, disabling driver signature enforcement is done as follows:

Since you have an Acer notebook, you have to modify "nvaci.inf" (nvcv.inf referrs to Clevo notebooks).

Basically you only have to open your current nvaci.inf (usually in "C:\NVIDIA\DisplayDriver\368.86\Win10_64\International\Display.Driver", find your exact string (identify it by knowing your Section and NVIDIA_DEV.xxxxxxx figure) and copy it to the extracted Quadro driver (just run the quadro driver exe, it will extract to C:\NVIDIA but tell you that no compatible hardware was found (before you mod the .inf). Once you modded the inf just run the setup.exe and it should work.

And yes, you can simply uninstall the driver to remove everything, including the modded inf.

 

What can I say.... thank you VERY VERY MUCH!
I'll give it a try and let you know!

 

Yeah tell me if it worked and whether you encountered any troubles, I'm also interested to hear if quadro drivers indeed gave you better CAD performance.

 

mmm first question: i found the nvac.inf in my current installation, but which file should i edit in the extracted drivers folder? There are multiple .inf files with different names.

https://postimg.org/image/kfw8670sp/

And another thing.
I discovered my section and id, so i created this string

Section023, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_139B&SUBSYS_10391025

i see that in every one of the file listed above there are 2 sections
[NVIDIA_Devices.NTamd64.10.0...14310]
[NVIDIA_Devices.NTamd64.10.0]
an i know that i have to put my string in both of them
but i don't really know what to place before the =

i thought that i had to find %NVIDIA_DEV.139B. but it is not present. Does this mean that those drivers are not compatible?

 

If you are referring to the Quadro driver, it's natural that your string is missing entirely. You have to add it manually, to make the driver's compatibility check pass.

Probably the easiest way to do it is, open the .inf of a Geforce driver, find your existing string in the inf, and copy paste it into the Quadro driver inf.

You literally only need to take the string from nvac.inf of the GeForce driver and paste it into the nvac.inf of the Quadro drivers. The whole line of the string.

Also, you should add the last part of my guide, where it names your card as "960M". You could also copy paste that line from the geforce into the Quadro inf.

 

This makes sense haha
And for the first question? Do you know wich of these files is the right one?

 

Try copy pasting the string in all infs that have similarly formatted strings inside, as for some reason that driver seems to be missing your nvac.inf file. Did you try installing it btw? If you downloaded the Quadro driver and the inf from the second post of that forum, it should be installing fine, unless the mod of that forum only included desktop cards.

Also make sure that driver signature enforcement is off prior to installing.

 

oh, i think i misunderstood. I didn't get that the one of the link could work "out of the box". I downloaded the latest quadro m2000m drivers from the nvidia website

edit: yes, it only includes desktop graphic cards

 

Alright then try to mod ALL the infs, haha. Just copy paste the string(s).

 

I only edited nvcvwi.inf and it passed compatibility check.
Do you think that it is enough?

Do i have to uninstall my geforce driver first?

 

Yup that should be enough. I would uninstall the GeForce driver using DDU in safe mode.
Just download DDU, run it, select "reboot to safe mode now", then hit Clean & Restart.

 

YEEEEES!
The drivers installed correctly, and actually rotating the same model that i used Yesterday looks way smoother.
I have only one problem: there isn't any control panel to switch the gpu, it looks like it Always use the nvidia (i think)

 

Ok i found it. Let me play with it and see how it works

 

Is it possible that Quadro drivers don't support Optimus? I'm not sure, frankly, but glad that it worked for you. At any case, you should install the latest Intel HD drivers and see whether Optimus is enabled then. I think DDU also deletes intel hd driver files? You could try installing the intel hd drivers and reinstalling the Quadro drivers again to see if it makes a difference.

Edit: Alright, happy testing

 

nope, i can only use intel grapics
This means that also intel graphics is faster than gtx :S

 

W00t? Don't you think your system is maybe not in high performance mode (energy options)? Something like that should never happen.

Also, it definitely should have installed the nvidia control panel if done correctly. Try uninstalling both intel and nvidia drivers, then installing the latest Intel HD first, then the nvidia one.

Honestly I suspect you were using the intel iGPU all along for CAD. It's worth going back to the normal GeForce driver, opening the nvidia control panel, go to the 3D management settings, search for the CAD exe and set the profile to use the nvidia card in high performance mode.

 

Nope, no way to use nvidia graphics, only intel one, the control panel is there but for some reason it doesn't automatically start on startup.
Also, even if i set the gtx960m for the single applications as i did with the previous drivers it will use intel graphics

 

Then go back to the geforce driver and in the control panels profile settings search for the CAD exe and select high performance settings. You were probably using the iGPU all along without knowing it.

 

With the previous drivers i used to select, for every app, wich graphic card i wanted to use.
Now even if i do so, the applications will show only intel one, and the icon on the bottom left shows that the gtx960m is not active

 

Is your notebook in high performance mode (windows energy options)?

 

Yes

 

Then it seems like the quadro drivers show no love for your 960M... You could still try to mod the other infs to make sure there's no problem in terms of windows detecting the card, but chances are it won't change the situation as the driver installed normally as you said.

 

Do you think that it could be due to incompatibility?
Maybe my hypotesis that gtx960m = m2000m wasn't correct. Is there a way to check?

 

Well, it has the same chip (GM107). You could try to download the driver I linked to you earlier and see if it changes anything. With a successful mod, any driver will install. Did you also add the "...... = NVIDIA GeForce 960M" in the end of the inf?

 

Yes I did. But what is the difference with those drivers?
In the second post there is the .inf file but it only contains the strings for desktop cards. I could edit them by myself, but aren't those regular quadro drivers as the ones i downloaded?

However the drivers were installed, the gtx960m showed up in device manager sayng "the device is working properly", bu there was no way to use it.
The settings in the control panel didn't make any difference.

Now i went back to stock drivers and everys working again

 

I guess the adventure ends here, was at least worth a try. Possibly Optimus screwed you there, as it's maybe configured to only interplay with correct nvidia drivers for your card. In the case of desktops and myself, the iGPU isn't used at all... Anyway, you could try to play around with profile settings of the nvidia control panel to see if it makes a difference for your CAD performance.

 

That is probably the problem. I will try again Tomorrow if i have some good ideas. Now i have to get some work done.
However thank you again. I learnt something really cool today! I will find it useful in the future. If i will find a way to make this work it would be a great deal, because the cheapest laptop with a quadro m2000m costs at least 500euros more than mine.
Thank you very much

 

You're welcome. I got my K5000M used for cheap, new quadros are indeed exorbitantly expensive.

 

Yes they are. It would be cool if the new boxes for egpu via thunderbolt 3 will support quadro / firepro.
But at the moment those enclosures also cost WAY too much.

 

MM here they say to edit nv_dispwi.inf
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=377158

Maybe I edited the wrong file?

Today i don't know if i can try, but when i'll have some free time i will.

 

MM here they say to edit nv_dispwi.inf
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=377158

Maybe I edited the wrong file?

Today i don't know if i can try, but when i'll have some free time i will.

 

Possible, yet strange that the compatibility check passed anyway. If you have half an hour to spare it's certainly worth a shot!

 

I will, but now i have another driver / hardware issue with my soundcard, i think i will avoid those experiments until i solve this (or replace the pc, another time....)

 

I started from the original quadro files, and this time i edited that way every .inf file containing a reference to the m2000m (the file i initially modified didn't include anything regarding that graphic card).
The result is the same, i managed to install every component of the package but in the end i couldn't find a way to force any application to use that graphic card.

I also have some games which allow you to choose the graphic card you want to use, but they only show intel graphics.
The graphic card however shows up correctly in device manager as a gtx960m

If you have any ideas let me know, at the moment i reverted to the original geforce drivers.

Thank you again

 

Let me think for a while. Actually, you could try to name the card as it's quadro counterpart, but chances of getting it working that way are low.

 

Yes, i think that it's more likely something related to the firmware of the graphic card or something like that. Do you have any experience on this kind of conversion? Actually i only heard of people acheiving good results by soldiering some resistances on the graphic card, that is something i will never do, especially on a new laptop.

 

Many thanks for the guidance, Sirana. I have successfully used the moded drive which works perfect on my 960M. I think the graphic choices of laptop is highly depending on the OS graphic configuration, which needs another topic about how to manage OS graphic choice well. Thanks Muz94 for this great topic.

 

May I ask you what did you manage to do?
I've actually never been able to get quadro drivers to work on my pc.
Did you really manage to have them fully functional?
If yes can you kindly explain how?

Thank you

 

Hello Muz94,

I think so. I have been using the MODed driver since then. The drivers provided from this thread work seamlessly and I do not know if it is only my feeling or it has actual boost on my laptop performance but at least feels brilliant. The only crucial step using the MODed driver is to add the moded digital signature to your systems' 'Trusted Root Certification Authorities'. Then you can install the moded driver as like a normal one.

Otherwise, you may need to disable the forced signature verifying to bypass the restriction to use any MODed drivers. As to your question, I do not know if the moded driver really brings you quadro operation since your driver still recognise your graphic card correctly, but I noticed some optimisation and improvements. Your new moded driver will work in 'Debug Mode' after successfully setup.

I would agree it is less possible to function a GTX960M like a full Quadro since the former is crippled a lot. But I do believe there are few tricks you can MOD through to make a reasonable card (it is a reasonable card).

Sorry for the late reply. Let me know if you managed to install the driver and get it working. Or are you asking making system actually recognise a Quadro card over a GTX one?

Best,

 

Hello Ririchiyo

I'm trying to install the Quadro driver on my GTX960m and it did not work. Could you upload the files you modified? And which driver did you download?

 

Here you go:
https://mega.nz/#!svBAxZZT!32Sljb-WSXpJ_Ha-Td7DfyoVxxQiVpZlbneFhCijjn4

It is no really difference from the driver shared here around, but you may need the certification file by CyrisGuru3D installed into your Trusted Root Certification Authorities (TRCA):
https://mega.nz/#!gn5BDDjK!NeuQeYhFz4By_aLVMTAGD--N1lu8i3ej2TkjBo6vRUs

I wonder if it is clear that you download this file, double click it and install certificate, and choose the TRCA as the destination for the installation.

Best luck,