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Run SolidWorks on a Mac: Soft-Mod Your GeForce into a Quadro

Started by Josh M · 11 months ago

Way back, in a recent post that showed all you Mac-ophiles how to use SolidWorks on a Mac a commenter named Peter was having graphics issues with his MacBook Pro when using SolidWorks.
His MacBook Pro uses a NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT video card, a low-end 512MB card that runs around $130 and up. He did a simple soft-mod (modify in software) to turn ... Continue reading »

32 comments

  • Cad_guy

    11 months ago

    I've soft-modded my 8800 GTS 640MB to a Quadro 4700. I found it on another
    reply
  • Josh M

    11 months ago

    Ivan, there's one I've come across that will allow you to go from a Radeon to FireGL. I haven't tried this though, so I would read through the forum this is under. Let us know what kind of card you have and if you are able to softmod your card successfully. Thanks!

    ATI Radeon to FireGL soft-mod
    reply
  • Ivan Loewen

    11 months ago

    It's a Radeon X1600 on my MBP... I'm not to familiar with ATI, usually work with nVidia. (thinking)... sit on computer soft-modding vs. good game of tennis in awesome summer weather vs. going out on a date with my wife.... where are the long winter hours when you need them
    reply
  • ascoldasice

    11 months ago

    i've got them working ( radeon into firegl). it's really not that hard. it's possible for winxp 32 and 64, so far not for vista.

    just check the first 2 forums on this site:
    http://forum.guru3d.com/forumdisplay.php?f=3
    reply
  • Lou Gallo

    11 months ago

    In vista all you need to do is download the Firegl driver (the equal of your Radeon) and install the inf from the "Have Disk" menu. No modding needed. In XP I had to piece together a driver but when I updated to Vista I just pointed it to the FireGL dirve and I was in business. RealView and all!
    reply
  • Neil

    11 months ago

    No I am sorry you cant mod a 8800 into a quadro or any other nvidia card since some 6800.
    SW will enable the Realview ability after recognising the cards altered identity but the performance is not changed. Typically there is a 50% performance difference between a quadro specifically tuned for CAD and a GeForce for games.
    reply
  • Cad_guy

    11 months ago

    So? Subjectively it runs better as a psuedo-Quadro than a GeForce. It doesn't crash and there are no more screen artifacts. It converts a unqualified video card into one that SW likes. Even if it's not a true Quadro it is an inexpensive stable card with all the bells and whistles for on the cheap.
    reply
  • Warren

    2 months ago

    I am curious what this post was responding to. After reading some of the above articles i am looking to upgrade my graphics card (GeForce 8800 GT).

    I run solidworks thru bootcamp on my Dual Quadcore 2.8 with 8 gigs ram. Im not much of a PC guy and didnt realize i need to be running on a 64 bit OS to access more than the 1.9 gigs of ram that XP can find. I wonder what else i need to know to optimize my mac hardware when using Solidworks. But back to my question:

    I'm looking at the graphics card comparison chart it doesn't seem to have a Quadro equivalent for the 8800. I'm guessing that's what your post is talking about. If so, what are the best options for someone with an 8800? Buy a new card?
    reply
  • Josh M

    2 months ago

    Warren, Hi. I'll try to find out what the equivalent would be. This post is discussing installing a driver to get a GeForce card to run like a Quadro. You may be able to do this with your 8800 and mod it to a Quadro 4700. You may also want to take a look at this Guide to Update your driver from Lou Gallo.
    reply
  • Warren

    2 months ago

    Thanks Josh,
    Im thinking an 8800 can not be modified. First i tried the steps above for downloading the nvidia GForce/Quadro lists to see what my 8800 compared to. I couldnt find anything in the list that was similar. Now trying this RivaTUner, i cant get past step 3. When i click on "customize" all i am able to do is modify my fan speed. Do you know if the 8800 can run like a quadro?
    reply
  • Dave Moore

    2 months ago

    You should be able to softmod any of the the 8000 series. An 8800 is equivalent to Quadro 4600.

    See here: http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=539
    reply
  • Warren

    2 months ago

    Dave,
    Are you positive an 8800GT is equivalent to a Quadro 4600?

    Following the instructions in that link- Step 1- comparing data from my card to find the matching Quadro there are a lot of differences. I have no idea what they mean but for example the architecture for my card is G92(D8P) while the quadro is G80GL, Fabrication Process is 65nm vs 90 on the Quadro, Transistor count is 754 million vs 681 on the Quadro, ect.
    I do see that Vertex shaders, Vertex version, ROPs, Textures/clock, Pixel shaders and version are all the same. Perhaps this is what counts?

    I had a hard time finding a match to my 8800GT
    reply
  • Dave Moore

    2 months ago

    My bad. The G92 should run as a QuadroFX3700.
    reply
  • Patrick

    2 months ago

    Hi Warren,
    I have pretty much the same system, albeit with 10 gigs of RAM. I run Vista 64 bit ( I recommend the Ultimate Edition, as there are some 'gotcha's' with the cheaper editions), and have tried all the recommended soft mods. They don't work for our card. It does seem that SW is in bed with nVidia, but what do I know? At any rate, don't waste your time trying.
    reply
  • Lou Gallo

    11 months ago

    I had Realview running on my MBP running and ATI X1600 back in late 2006 and in Vista in Late 2007. I have since updated my MBP to the new one which is now an nVidia 8600M GT I have not had the time to mod it for Vista yet. I have read a ton about it not being possible since the 6800 series but the article here seems to be for XP only. I will keep you posted when I do get it working but unlike my X1600, this card performs fine except it is missing RealView. Still the fastest system I have used thus far.
    reply
  • Neil

    11 months ago

    In the long run you arent doing anyone any favours by blabbing about modding on your blog.
    I also wonder if any of the companies concerned would be happy to have this publicised through this channel which is now also being picked up by CadDigest..
    Both Nvidia and ATI have changed their drivers and the hardware internally as reqd to kill this type of substitution off and you cant blame them for that.
    Sure CAD cards are overly expensive but they arent going to sit there and loose a lot of money from loophole 'piracy'.
    It wouldnt surprise me if SW get told by Nvidia and ATI to do something about Realview.
    and it wouldnt surprise me if SolidSmack gets a solid smack form higher up the food chain
    reply
  • TheDave

    10 months ago

    Hi folks, this is a great trick. I've done this to my geforce 8600M GT (128mb) in my 15" MBP. WHAT a difference. I use Pro/E, Solidworks, Rhino, and Maya on the windows (xp) side, and it works much better with 3D. Its not my primary system for this stuff, but its good that i can take it on the road.
    Anyway, all is great, except for two glitches: it stays at max brightness (not too big a deal), and the display will not turn on coming out of sleep. The computer wakes up, but i get no display... have to restart to get it back. This is a deal-breaker, i'm ready to go back to geforce drivers. So far i've tried 174.93, 171.16, and 175.80 from laptopvideo2go. Anyone else experience this? thanks.
    reply
  • TheDude

    1 month ago

    I have the same problem with MBP display never waking up from sleep. There must be some way around this. Even if there was some sort of utility to restart the display drivers. The improvement from the soft-mod is so huge that I can't imagine going back.
    reply
  • danielronge

    3 weeks ago

    that's a hardware problem with some MBPs ... my display wouldn't power up at all anymore at one point.
    I had my Motherboard replaced (applecare) and no problems since ...
    reply
  • MacDaddy

    10 months ago

    Thanks for figuring this out. This tip has single-handedly increased my firm's productivity 1000%. Way to go!
    reply
  • eca

    9 months ago

    I was happy to run into this info since I'm looking at getting SW to run at least some of the time on a MBP. Questions I have are: do the card mods affect the screen performance of any other apps (ie. photoshop running on the OSX side)? and are the mods made under the XP side or OSX side? Thanks very much.
    reply
  • Peter

    9 months ago

    As far as I can tell the firmware mod does not have an effect on any applications running under OSX. The mods are made under the XP side in bootcamp. Good luck.
    reply
  • ivanka

    9 months ago

    Hey guys, I applied the soft mod to my NVDIA 8600M GT of my MBP into (040E NVDIA Quadro FX 570) then I downloaded the driver 174.93 with the modded information. However, when I try to update the driver at the end, the device manager wizard displays a note that says:

    "Cannot install this hardware. There was a problem installing this hardware
    VIDEO CONTROLLER (VGA compatible)
    The driver selected for this device does not support Windows XP"

    Even, I 've tried to install several times using Rivaturner even providing other options from the menu like (040c Unknown device) but in the end I get the same result.
    Can anyone help me letting me know what step or procedure I'm avoiding or doing wrong?
    Thanks
    reply
  • ivanka

    9 months ago

    I got it finally
    this driver works very weel in MBP
    Thanks
    reply
  • Josh M

    9 months ago

    Hi Ivanka, sorry for not getting back to you sooner. Did you have to do a different setting in Rivatuner? or did you have to dwonload the driver again? glad you got it working .
    reply
  • Radicalgel

    9 months ago

    Ya I have the same problem as TheDave. When my macbook Pro goes into standby the the screen doesnt come back on. :( Does anyone know how to solve this issue. Please help. I use a lot of 3D apps and I badly need this softmod to work properly.
    reply
  • Tim

    8 months ago

    Question: Does applying these software mods affect how the card is recognized when booting up in MacOSX?
    reply
  • Rob

    6 months ago

    No. It's only the windows side.
    reply
  • Rob

    6 months ago

    Thanks for this post! I followed your directions and discover the 7600GT in my 24" iMac is equatable to a Quadro 560. Did the rivatuner thing followed by those drivers, and viola! It definitely took me an hour of screwing around but it was worth it, real view is pretty nice! :)
    reply
  • Will

    4 months ago

    I'm using the SDK version of solid works (the 150 day time locked version of the educational edition that comes with many solidworks manuals) and while my computer recognized my 8600m gt as a quadro fx570m, realview was still greyed out.

    I'm thinking that perhaps, the SDK version does not support realview but I can't find anything about it and since there's no support for it, dassault isn't too helpful on the matter.

    Does anyone know if the SDK supports realview?
    reply
  • Tony

    2 months ago

    I run a soft-modded 8800 GTS. It works great!
    reply

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