* deimos:

NVIDIA's chip designation is based on the same cores (G80, G84, etc),
but they seem to be adding "GL onto them to differentiate Quadro's and I
doubt this is merely marketing.

The GPUs are 100% identical, that's a fact. The difference lies in the
functionality that is activated by the driver.

Older cards (GF6 series and before)
were easily modded to Quadro's with RivaTuner, but newer ones are a
total pain in the ass and professional applications like Solidworks may
not detect them as a Quadro.

That's because changes in the hardware made it more different to change
the GPU ID from Geforce to Quadro.

Benjamin