Just some interesting thoughts

I've been thinking a lot lately about the Quadro FX1500M that I have in my M90. Now, I know that benchmarks place it roughly equal to or a little higher than a 7900GS, but one thing that has always confused me is that the 1500M features a 45W power consumption vs. the 7900GS' 20W or so. So I got to doing a little investigating and I've been reading around on the nVidia website. I'm beginning to wonder if the 1500M is in fact really an underclocked 256MB 7900GTX with perhaps some shaders and pipes locked via BIOS.

First of all, according to this website, the Go 7900GTX features 45W power consumption. So does the 1500M. Also, according to nVidia ( here), the 1500M features a memory bandwidth of 38.4GB/s, the same as both the 2500M and the 7900GTX, but higher than the 7900GS' 32.0, as seen here. On the other hand, it features a 7.5 Billion pixels/second fill rate, the same as the 7900GS (although the 2500M has a 10.8 Billion pixels/second fill rate vs. the 7900GTX's 12.0... maybe cause they're workstation cards?). I haven't been able to really find any clock speeds of the 1500M on the net, but as far as I can remember from when I had the 91.33 drivers installed, they sat somewhere around 375MHz core and somewhere in the 400MHz memory range. This is actually the same as the 7900GS in the E1705, but below the 7900GS' 375/500 speed as indicated here, and well below the 7900GTX's stock 500/600 speed. I guess you can see that the evidence is a little misleading. On one hand, performance points to the fact that it is a 7900GS. But comparing the hard specs of the cards, the 1500M actually comes closer to the 7900GTX, which of course, is available in a 256MB version. Of course, this also begs the question of what the 2500M really has, considering it generally outperforms a 7900GTX in benchmarks and has 100W of power consumption, but that's a question for another day. So what do you guys think? Maybe flashing the BIOS to a 7900GTX would unlock the extra features and give basically a 256MB 7900GTX? I'm not really sure at this point, but it's interesting nonetheless. Personally, I'm happy with the gaming performance, and don't see myself stressing the card too much in the future, but it's interesting to think about.

 

Very good research notebook_ftw. Now, this is very intriguing. Alot of the main specifications, but the bandwidth of the two don't. The 7900 GS does seem to have a smaller bandwidth. I think this may be because the memory on the 7900 GS may be slower, but that has yet to be confirmed.

The fill rate does match, but strangley the fill rate of the 7900 GTX is higher than that of the FX2500M. That seems a little weird, as the FX2500M should at least have equal fill rates. Other than that, the cores do seem almost exactly the same. I wonder if you could unlock the shaders, and try and clock the card to GTX speeds. A few benchmarks and a comparison with a 7900 GTX should really show how the two perform. However, I don't think its too safe just to go ahead, and do a vBIOS flash. There still is a chance it may be a 7900 GS core.

 

Yeah, I won't be doing it myself anytime soon. But I hope someone does. I just thought it was interesting. Of course, you can flash a 7900GS to a 7900GTX BIOS,so perhaps the same thing can be done for the 1500M. That would really show the power of the 1500M.

 

Very interesting, flashing the 1500M. Does that mean a better videocard for the same money? I wonder if you will do it. Be carefull though.

Charlie

 

Hey, we've all gotta start our major computer insanity's somewhere I started mine on "new" 386's way back in the day

Good luck if you're willing to attempt this.

 

hello, i also soon will be the owner of this gpu (ill buy a nw9440 from hp) and for me its also important to get all the gaming features. i started this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=1673805

there i get an answer from dreamer, if you want to know something about gpus ask him because he is the "notebook evangelist", he also tested all sorts off nvidia cards and made a chart of them.

if you get some mor info about flashing this card or using other drivers (like the 7900gtx driver) it qould be nice, if you can inform me.
thanx
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