Default How can I tell if I have a real Quadro FX4000? - Technology Forum - Home Theater, Computer, Televisions, Personal Electronics and more!

Semona · 07-30-2006, 02:01 AM

A good year ago I bought a used Nvidia FX4000 card from a guy on Ebay from the U.S. At the time I did a little bit of research about modded 6800 GT and how they could be converted into FX4000's but I'm not really a technical guy and I wanted the card to simply enable me to work on my 3d Design Applications.

Upon arrival of the card, I noticed that the metal plating which sits on top of the heatsink had the Geforce 6800 GT logo (the pic of the mermaid etc)
I wrote back to the seller immediately as I was confused and had a little fear of bring cheated. The seller did reply to my message of concern and strongly backed himself up that the card was a legit real fx4000 and that the original fx4000 heatsink had been replaced due to wear and tear before selling. He also said that at the time of selling, geforce 6800 gt's do not have dual dvi connectors but single dvi+vga and only Nvidia Fx4000's had the dual connectors so it was a totally genuine product (i have since found 6800 Gts with dual DVI connectors)

After this brief finding I decided to install my card and sure enough when I fired it up with the quadro drivers, it read as an fx4000 and it let me did what i wanted to do in Studio Max including the use of maxtreme drivers etc so I left it as that.

12 Months later bringing up to date to last month I noticed that the core was overheating to like 125c and my 3d games kept crashing. I decided to buy an artic cooling heatsink fan for the card and to do this I had to take off the nvidia standard cooling solution. It was then to my amazement that when I pulled off the heatsink and fan on the card, I found that the GPU had the 6800 GT text logo etched onto the surface of the GPU!!!

The question I want to ask is..

Do real quadro's have this logo etced on the GPU and do they really use the 6800 GT GPU? I have tried to search for pictures of the fx4000 gpu (without heatsink and fan) to find a conclusion to this problem but I havnt had any luck so I decided to post here and ask.

I hope someone can clarify some information to me and It will put my mind at rest even if I have been cheated.

Cyborg · 07-30-2006, 02:02 AM

I'd say you have been cheated. As you can see the etching says GT also the GT were in fact sold with Dual DVI, as you found out. My old XFX 6800GT had dual DVI.

If they go to the trouble of etching GT in, then wouldn't they also put Quadro for a Quadro card?? i mean it is far more expensive.

TechBoy · 07-30-2006, 02:02 AM

you got ripped off, this is the reason ill never buy anything off of ebay, even if it does come (which isnt a garentee), people pull **** like this..

ITRocks · 07-30-2006, 02:02 AM

I read somewhere that modded geforce's do not have the ability to have Anti Aliased Lines in wireframe mode in 3D Apps like Studio Max, yet this works fine on my system.

hmmm thats quite sad news. So does this mean that the seller had hard modded the 6800 and is that why it reads as a quadro when I install quadro drivers? Has anyone actually seen the GPU chip of their real FX4000 and what is there etched on it?

Cyborg · 07-30-2006, 02:02 AM

Do your drivers say Quadro? If so, then screw it. You got ripped off, because you could have just bought a 6800 Ultra, but you have a card that performs just as well, if not better.

TechBoy · 07-30-2006, 02:03 AM

It's been a long time but I believe one of the soft mod methods was a bios hack? Sorry if I'm wrong, but I think thats accurate. If so it probably would show up as an FX4000.

EDIT: google for pics or specs. You'll see the FX 4000 has two molex hookups, not one like the 6800.

Cyborg · 07-30-2006, 02:03 AM

Ah good thinking. I completely forgot about the molex connections.

Semona · 07-30-2006, 02:03 AM

That's wierd, the card I have does have 2 molex hookups... I think I should take a pic of the card and load it up here.

ITRocks · 07-30-2006, 02:03 AM

Yes please do.

Though it does infact look like its a pure bred Quadro.

Semona · 07-30-2006, 02:04 AM

Here is an image of the card after the fan and heatsink has been removed. You can clearly see the words 6800 GT on the GPU and there is additional etched 6800 GT characters on the metal plate on the GPU that is covered up by the silicon stuff that for the heatsink.

You can also see 2 molex hookups.

But i'm still confused...