Quadro 3600M Pipeline Details / RivaTuner Workarounds / Next Steps

I spent a few hours working with Riva Tuner and drivers and I am now able to see all of the shader info.

If you also want to do this, download the 169.39 drivers for the Quadro 3700 Desktop model, then hack the inf file to include 061c (3700 is 061a) and install the drivers. In Riva Tuner go into the Power Users Settings and set ForceVGADeviceID to 193 (8800 gtx I think) in Vista or 401 (8600GT) in XP. This will allow you to unlock the Low Level System Settings.

The 175.75 drivers will NOT work with Riva Tuner.

Ok, on to what I found. There are a total of 128 stream units in the 3600M. 64 of them are disabled (units 4-7) with no hardware mask. There are a total of 6 raster units in the 3600M. 2 of them are disabled (units 5-6). It appears as though Riva Tuner is not able to re-enable them - at least not in Vista 32. I also tried XP with no luck.

Looking back at the 7900gs to 7900gtx Bios flashing, extra stream units were probably not enabled after the flash, but performance increased. This led me to compare the 8800MGTX info to the 3600M info. I also compared the 3600M to the desktop 3700.

It looks like all three cards are based on the same processor. The 8800MGTX has 2 banks of stream units disabled and the 3700 has 1 bank disabled. Other than that, the 3 seem very close to each other. It reminds me a lot of the old 7900gs/gtx days.

I pulled my BIOS with Nibitor and it is not reading the 3600M correctly at this point. It is however reading the 8800MGTX bios correctly. The next step would be for some really nice person to make their 8800MGTX bios available to the group. Then some really brave and/or drunk person can try flashing the 8800MGTX bios on to the 3600M. If it worked, we could then go through and attempt to enable stream units without taking away the Quadro features. We would at least know if the stream units were laser cut or not.

My real hope in all of this is that the 3600M is using the same chip as the 8800MGTX. Dell says they are. The 3600M certainly benchmarks faster than a GTS. But we still have 32 shaders in hiding right now.

The best case scenario would be opening up all 128 shader units and 6 raster units on both the 8800MGTX and Quadro 3600M. But that assumes that the pipelines are not laser cut and my guess is that they probably are.

Just to make sure everyone here is fired up, the Apple boards are awash in people flashing consumer 8800 cards for use in their Power Macs. True, Apple did make things a little easier for them, but come on, they are Mac people! Our little group of gear heads and hardware teakers should be able to keep up!

So whats the next step?

Yes - tried everything in Vista. Tried lots of drivers from GeForce and Quadro. No luck. I quit working on it after about 9 hours. Later today I will go through everything in XP.

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No - the 3600M is only showing 64 Shader Units. The 8800MGTX has 96. Rescuing these 32 (or more) Shaders - and hoping they work - is the whole point of this.

The 3600M has a total of 64 units disabled in all. The 8800MGTX has a total of 32 units disabled.

Just to be clear - Shader Unit is the new word for Pipeline. They could be used interchangeably, but they are not quite the same thing.

Just to follow up. XP is the same. Only device ID that works and gives you the correct shader info is 401 (8600 GT).

Unless I am missing something, Riva Tuner and software enabling the pipes is out. Someone might want to try what I tried and see if they get the same results.

So - who wants to offer up an 8800MGTX Bios?

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The only hope I have is that Dell is getting bulk shipments of the Mobile G92 card and then flashing them as Quadro 3600M or 8800MGTX depending on application. I really want to try the bios flash to see what happens.

Yes, I know its a hell of a long shot.

Agreed. All I did was figure out a way to finally allow us to poke around at the specs of the cards. Just remember, all of the info coming from RivaTuner could be wrong because of the workarounds needed to get at the info.

I am hoping that others with more experience and talent will pick up where I left off.

Ah - I understand now. I was hoping that once you got past the heat sinking that the underlying circuit boards would be similar. I guess they are probably not now.

Even if all of the ideas end up in dead ends, at least there were some ideas put out there.

zzpulp - Thanks! I will get my version of the 3600M ROM to you. I am also going to download the ROMS you have available.

I am working with an old timer (he's in his 50's) that programs in machine language and has been modding/hacking/cracking everything you can imagine since the early 80's. Hopefully he will be able to help with any checksum issues.