Re: [Xen-users] Is it possible to mod a Geforce GTX 560 graphics card into a Quadro?

[Gordan Bobic <gordan@bobich.net>]

On 08/01/2013 12:21 AM, David TECHER wrote:
> Very interesting mail! Under the impression that BIOS were modified
> using something like perl, awk, sed for ID (to inject). I don't think
> that tool like the old rivaturner was used :)

Nothing so fancy - just hexedit and vim (the latter as a scratch pad to 
just work out the changes I need to make.

> Will wait  for reading the next articles on your blog :)

Thanks. I have the next article in the series half-written, I just 
haven't had the time to do some before/after performance testing yet.

FYI, the GTX680 BIOS, once you tear out all of the UEFI wrapper bloat, 
is under 64KB (smaller than the GTX580 BIOS!). I mention this because I 
seem to recall that there was a 64KB limit on the GPU BIOS when using it 
to re-initialize the card for primary passthrough. The only downside of 
the 6xx series cards is that they do require a hardware modification 
(single resistor, controlling the 3rd nibble of the device ID). 
Everything else can be achieved by modifying the BIOS.

It should be interesting to see what device ID the Quadro K6000 comes 
with - that card is a _monster_, more shaders than even the Titan, and 
12GB of VRAM. It'll be interesting to see if a similar modification can 
be used to turn a Titan into it, and whether the K6000 works properly 
for VGA passthrough.

Then again, if I manage to find the time to churn out that vBAR=pBAR 
patch, there'll be much less to be gained from modifing the cards. That 
plus making things work properly on my broken hardware would be killing 
two birds with one stone.

Gordan