Benjamin Gawert wrote:
* 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.

Do you have a source on this? I used to think the same, but I've seen
anecdotal evidence that the cores have different transistor counts and
certainly there are different surface components (accounting for the
12-bit color output precision and other media production centric features).

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

Many professional applications like the ones I work with actually have
some code for Quadro specific detection that goes beyond just the driver
or device ID, so there must be an API method of detecting Quadro
features other than just DXCaps or GL extensions.