ATI & Mastercam Explained

[DC Gorn]

From eMastercam:

"ATI's commercial line of cards which include the Radeon, Rage, All In Wonder, and Xpert series are not recommended. As it stands, ATI is notorious for having weak OpenGL implementations in its commercial drivers which can result in poor performance and instability in OpenGL-based applications such as Mastercam. ATI's workstation line of cards, FireGL, do not appear to be plagued by OpenGL issues."

 

 

I am a mastercam user and a hobbiest PC builder who likes ATI. I agree with the above statment 100%. I just wanted to explain. The fireGL card are very pricey. The current FireGL X2 256 sells for around $800. Now the part ATI does not want you to know the 9800 XT 256 (gaming card) is the same card as the FireGL X2 256. Just like the 9700Pro 128 = FireGL X1 128. The FireGL X1 still sells for $500 while the 9700Pro can be had for $180.

 

ATI makes a nice margin on its Cad card so they write their gaming card drivers to mess up in cad softwares. This is not just a Mastercam issue. If the $180 gaming card could do what the Cad card could no one would buy those high end cards. All those Pro-E users would have nothing to brag about.

 

How do I know this? I have converted my 9700Pro into a FireGL X1. This remove all graphic errors I had. I had allot of them. My home AMD 2800 with FireGL conversion now out preforms my Dell P4 2.8 with a GF 5600 (256). With the same model open my FireGL get almost twice the FPS as the 5600. The 5600 has twice the ram.

 

Before you go getting all mad at ATI know this. Geforce does the same exact thing. The GF4 is equal to the Quadro4. A card costing atleast twice the gaming version. The only differnts is the drivers. Geforce just does not go as far as screwing things up. They know they have a maket in the low end Cad systems they wish to keep. But they are holding back what the card could do in cad.

 

The reason I have not listed the new Geforce cards is that we have not yet seen a convertion of these cards.

 

Of course ATI does not want you to change your card into a firegl. At first it was easy. Just change the PCI address in the Video card Bios and Download the right drivers. ATI caught on quickly and start add stuff so the newest driver can not be converted. There are scrips around so the ATI and Geforce conversion can be done. Just don't bet on future driver support.

 

For you tech heads you can research more here:

http://forums.guru3d.com

[kwolf]

But soft modding GF->Quadro stopped few months ago, unless you want to use detonator 42.51 for GF4 or 45.28 for GF FX 5600 and above.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

I've got a 5600 w/ 256 RAM and am interested in converting it to a higher end card if possible. Is that site where I should be going for that kind of info???

[P_Scott]

DC Gorn,

 

Great first post! Welcome to the forum.

[Bullines]

Note that a soft mod, while often yielding some performance improvements, is still not like real thing. If you visually compare a Radeon card to a FireGL card or a GeForce card to a Quadro card, you'll immediately notice that the cards contain different components. It would be akin to saying that you can truly soft mod a Celeron to a Pentium IV. I've never found a way to soft mod cache memory that doesn't exist, yet.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

quote:

---

... yet ...

---

The day is young, what are you waiting for???

 

Maybe those script kiddies out there could put their mis-guided "skills" into something more productive such as this.

 

Yeah, that'll happen...

[Chris Rizzo]

Last week I tried soft modding my gforce 4ti 4200 to a Quadro 700. Resulted in massive system unstabiltiy. Ended up switching it back. Your right kwolf, you have to run older detonator drivers to make it work. Riva tuner is the utility.

[kwolf]

James I think the following is the best summary for GF owners need to soft mod their cards to Quadro.

 

quote:

---

 

.... What I have found is that the geforce 2,3 & 4 series cards can be converted to quadros using drivers up to 42.51. If you use a later driver they have protection against modding and hence cause ogl lockups. These lockups can take from 10s to a few minutes to happen so they are not always evident immediately.

 

With the NV30/35 chipsets (FX5800 & 5900 only) there appears to be a loophole in the 45.xx series drivers that allow sq4 scripts to be applied and the ogl lockups do not occur. The fx 5600 however is a NV31 chip so this loophole does not exist for this card.

 

The good news for

fx5600 owners

is that the 42.51 driver had some support for the then soon to be released fx5600. To get a fx5600 to softquadro the following works well....

 

1. Download driver version 42.51.

2. Apply sq4 and nvstrap antiprotection patches.

3. Apply anisbooster patch (optional)

4. Load nvstrap and set pci id to custom - 318 (unknown device)

5. Manually load the driver and choose NV31GL.

 

You should now have a quadro NV31GL up and running with no ogl lockups.

 

I have tried the FX5700 (NV36) and was unable to get it to work at all, quadro or not with any 40 series driver. I expect it cannot be converted to a quadro as the 50 series drivers cannot be softquadroed without ogl lockups.

 

The 45.33 driver does have limited support for a NV36GL but I could not get the card to work with it. (Someone may find a way around this?).

 

The fx5200 (NV34) is not supported by the 42.51 driver nor does it have the NV30/35 loophole as far as I can tell, therefore I expect there is little hope for this card to SQ properly either.

 

In summary the following cards can be softquadroed with the following drivers....

 

Geforce 2&3 series

- All drivers - just need Nvstrap antiprotection for drivers above 30.82.

 

Geforce 4 series

- All drivers up to 30.82, need sq4 scripts

- Drivers after 30.82 - 42.51 need sq4 and nvstrap antiprotection.

- Drivers after 42.51 - No Go.

 

Geforce FX5800/5900

- Drivers 45.xx only - need sq4, nvstrap and detonatorfxantiprotector patch.

 

Geforce fx5600

-Driver 42.51 only - need sq4, nvstrap and set pci id to 318.

 

Geforce fx5200

-Don't think its possible but have not tried one to prove it.

 

Geforce fx5700

-Not possible.

 

Excuse the long post but I hope it helps some people as many of the posts here have helped me.

---

You can find full thread in http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=...10&pagenumber=2

 

HTH

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

KEWL!!!!!!

 

Thanks a TON. I'm going to give it a shot this weekend. I'll report back.

[TheePres]

[*]Apply sq4 and nvstrap antiprotection patches.

[*]Apply anisbooster patch (optional)

Where are these patches found??

[kwolf]

You should download rivatuner utility , read the instructions . The program has those patches itself, all you should do is applying them on an unpacked version of supported detonator , like 42.51 or 45.28 for FX cards.

[Fig sign]

Hi ,folks !

 

I have bad news ,this stuff is limited.

I may be wrong ,it is only IMHO ,I`ve tried tweaking with rivatuner good time ago ,and found out this :

May be Mastercam and Unreal Tournament will work good (they were BTW ,before ,too ) but programs like Fusion ,Basilisk and so on not so much .

It sounds stupid ,but a modern computer emulating old Mac like Performa can be knocked down with such a stuff ,emulation over emulation, this can knock-off anyone .

So I don`t remember what it was ,Basilisk or Fusion ,but this stuff refused to work and that`s decided it`s fate .

I think there are other limitations too.

I killed a thingie

 

I prefer clean ,simple ways

 

Teh straight

[Fig sign]

Not to hijack a thread ,that`s reminds a story with Macintosh ,Apple and Macos8.

They used to tell stories about you can not install it on the older Macs due to the hardware limitations ,in fact they wanted to boost new apple selling .

While installing Software checked Gestaldt number and little utility was able enough to bypass the limitation ,you simply change Gestalt number to the modern model and here you are .

I used it couple of times

But anyway to run new Os on new Apple is 100 times better and Kewl !

 

Somebody give me a Mac to play with ,sorta nostalgy .

[DC Gorn]

Thanks for the added info Kwolf. My home 9700 was a major problem for me thats why I did the research into the ATI. I convertered about 3 weeks ago and runs better then my work Dell now. It used to be too many graphic errors to mention. Now I dont have to stay after work when I have a hot project! Soon as James reports back I might try that mod at work.

 

As for the hardware lacking here some benchs.

http://www.nvworld.ru/docs/sfgl_e.html

 

This is not for the hardware noob. I have done 3 conversions now first one went smooth second one I had to manualy install the seprate multi monitor support. By dumb mistake I installed the secondary monitor in the primary spot and could not access windows. Had to boot safe mode and uninstall drivers and start all over. I was abit more carful with the third.

 

FYI just so some the board guys dont think I am doing something funny I have 2 logins. One from home and one from work. I also post under "Gorn"

 

[ 03-05-2004, 12:23 AM: Message edited by: DC Gorn ]

[Chris Rizzo]

Thanks for the other forum link, kwolf. When I tried mine, I was sampling a whole mess of differnet detonator drivers, all resulting in total unstabliblty. I think that I just did'nt go back far enough to the 42.xx drivers.

 

Good luck James, lemme know how/if it works...what kind of card are you running?

[Markus Roth]

Hello Forum,

 

with this: http://www.nvworld.ru/docs/sq4e.html

 

i managed to turn my geforce4 ti 4200 into a quadro4 780..

 

 

Markus

[Salahuddin]

nice site Markus, but I belive that system will give you that you have Quadro, its nice to see the name, but 100% it won't make the same work as real quadro cards.

[DC Gorn]

I will be working on a duel boot system this week end. I will beable to boot my AMD 2800 with either the 9700 drivers or the FireGL drivers. Anyone know a bench test for Mastercam? Right now i just open the biggest model I can find hit the end key and measure the FPS. Any other ideas on measuring preformance?

[Fig sign]

Compare verification time of some heavy toolpath

[Bullines]

To add to what Iskander said, perhaps try running a 3D Mark benchmark before and after you soft mod your video card and compare the results.

[DC Gorn]

Since the firegl does not support AA I think it will score very low in the Mark2001 3d and very very low in 2003. This is the reason I am building the double boot system. 9700 pro drivers owns the games. Firegl owns the Cad. I play Bf 1942 and the card works great but the lack of AA is noticable.

[kwolf]

It's always been discussed in those forums that Quadro cards are slower in games than correspnding GeForce cards. So there's no speed improvements in converting a GF to Quadro when you want to try games, actually the speed decreases.

The best way to measure speed improvements is running SPECView Perf 7.x .

You can find those charts from various people in the guru3d forums. All state that the speed in Pro/E and UGS and Max .. improves drastically, sometimes by a factor of 3x, if and only if you patched and install correctly.

HTH

[Bullines]

quote:

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Since the firegl does not support AA I think it will score very low in the Mark2001 3d and very very low in 2003.

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Of course they support AA If they didn't, how could they be marketed for CAD and DCC? If they didn't, then they'd be better suited to be used in text-based terminals. The entry level FireGL supports hardware AA. The rest of the FireGL line must as well.

 

quote:

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It's always been discussed in those forums that Quadro cards are slower in games than correspnding GeForce cards.

---

I'd have to say that I've experienced the opposite. My home system has a 128MB GeForce4 Ti 4400. On a workstation at work with a 64MB Quadro 4 700 XGL, the Quadro killed my GeForce on 3DMark (DirectX), Unreal Tournament 2003 benchmark (DirectX) and Quake3 Arena demos (OpenGL). The Quadro 4's support DirectX 8 and the Quadro FX's support DirectX 9. I think it's fair game. The GPU on the Quadro card that dwarfed the GPU on my GeForce card must've made a difference. I might've come a bit closer if I soft-modded my GeForce, but I bet I still couldn't hold a candle to the Quadro.

[lilgit]

i am using the new 4.2 ati drivers for my radeon 9600 pro. by setting open_gl settings to application preference i am getting good results in mastercam. no antialiasing mind you, but no problems and fast interaction. the 4.2 drivers make my maya personal learning edition work perfectly even with settings cranked..it was unusable before. ati must of improved open_gl support?

[lilgit]

by the way..is there a difference between hacking a video card into a better version and hacking mastercam level 1 into level 3? should we be angry because cnc software is taking features away from level 3 and selling it to us as level 1 ?