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Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10

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Re: Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10

#171

Post by Keyframe »

brudgers wrote: post #158
Keyframe wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the premium in quadros these days is in double operations speed. Since I need floats, not doubles I opted for two GTX 680s. They are screaming compared to Q6000, but I could always use more.

If an application uses floats in lieu of doubles might that be evidence that accuracy is not at a premium?

Indeed, 53 significant bits (doubles) vs 24 significant bits (floats). In my case float performance was what I needed. There are always other options, depending on your (precision) needs and needs in general, such as binary coded decimals, fixed point arithmetic...

Re: Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10

#172

Post by GhotiFish »

danilocampos wrote: post #60
GhotiFish wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. That's a wonderful rhetoric, but really what it's saying is that the only people who don't deserve being screwed are the people that make it a hobby to tinker. There's many other areas of life to specialize in, not just technology/engineering side of things. I think general fair play trumps an incentive to learn and hack.

What makes price discrimination unfair? Nvidia needs to recover costs and earn a profit. They do so by segmenting the market. That they are able to do so in this way suggests that no one else is able to perform the R&D necessary to sell these tools at a lower cost. Who's getting screwed? The gamers who lose out on pro features many don't even need?

or the pros getting massively overcharged because culture accepts the notion of sinking tens of thousands of dollars on the equipment of ones profession.

The answer is both.

Re: Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10

#173

Post by nyskton »

dhimes wrote: post #141
alpine01 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also worth noting that the electrical performance of your cheaper card's chip may not be as good as the higher grade chip, so may overheat more or have a failure earlier in it's life. On chip lines like these, there's usually a process called "Speed Binning" where basically when you test the performance of each chip, and you put the higher performing ones in a different "Bin" than the slightly less efficient one…

I had no idea that the manufacturing variation among chips is large enough to create performance tiers. Pass/fail I get, but this sounds like more extreme. Like, the difference between C and fail may be such that some non-negligible percentage of chips that test into the C bin should really be in the fail bin.

They do the same thing with regular electrical components. Resistors for example have tolerance bands so they make a ton of them and then if it fits in the 1% range it gets marked with the 1% color band and sold for more than the 5% tolerance resistors. It's easier to change the marketing strategy than the manufacturing process.

Re: Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10

#175

Post by danilocampos »

GhotiFish wrote: post #172
danilocampos wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes price discrimination unfair? Nvidia needs to recover costs and earn a profit. They do so by segmenting the market. That they are able to do so in this way suggests that no one else is able to perform the R&D necessary to sell these tools at a lower cost. Who's getting screwed? The gamers who lose out on pro features many don't even need?

or the pros getting massively overcharged because culture accepts the notion of sinking tens of thousands of dollars on the equipment of ones profession. The answer is both.

You seem really excited about being angry about this, and I'd hate to deprive of your rage-joy. So, sure.

Re: Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10

#176

Post by stox »

driax wrote: post #106
memset wrote: post #23

The corresponding reddit thread is quite insightful: "It is far cheaper to make one very good chip for the highest market, and modify it slightly for lower end markets... Now, this is the part you hate: this is the only viable alternative. There's no point demanding different designs for different market segments as that would significantly increase the cost you, the consumer, pays. You can demand chips be sold at lo…

One thing to keep in mind, is that author mentions that the same card does not perform equivalently in Windows and Linux, specifically multi-screen support under Linux. From the forum post: "I own a NVidia GTX 690 which I bought for two reasons, gaming, and multi monitor setup for work, NVidia made it very clear that this card would drive up to 3 screens in 2d, which it does quite nicely :-+... under windows :--! The…

I have a GTX680, and it supports three monitors out of the box using the proprietary Nvidia drivers on Linux. No hacks needed.

Re: Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10

#178

Post by oh_sigh »

joelthelion wrote: post #123
memset wrote: post #23

The corresponding reddit thread is quite insightful: "It is far cheaper to make one very good chip for the highest market, and modify it slightly for lower end markets... Now, this is the part you hate: this is the only viable alternative. There's no point demanding different designs for different market segments as that would significantly increase the cost you, the consumer, pays. You can demand chips be sold at lo…

It's just a situation where capitalism doesn't lead to the most economically efficient solution. The company and the consumers are rational, yet for no additional cost, everyone could be benefiting from better hardware. Unfortunately I don't have a better system to propose :)

Don't you feel a little stupid for bringing up the term "economically efficient" when you don't know what you're talking about?

"Economically efficient" is not equivalent to "the cheapest possible goods"

Re: Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10

#179

Post by GhotiFish »

danilocampos wrote: post #175
GhotiFish wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or the pros getting massively overcharged because culture accepts the notion of sinking tens of thousands of dollars on the equipment of ones profession. The answer is both.

You seem really excited about being angry about this, and I'd hate to deprive of your rage-joy. So, sure.

I appreciate hacker news preventing anyone under 500 from downvoting comments. It makes sense really. People use downvotes as an analog for disagreement, but those kinds of actions obfuscate proper discussion.

Really what they should be used for is dissuading bad thinking, trolling, or poor rhetoric.

What do you think?

Re: Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10

#180

Post by goldfeld »

S_A_P wrote: post #156
exDM69 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a key insight on this issue that the general public seems to be unaware about: the most expensive thing in workstation cards like Quadro and Tesla is warranty and support . This is also the reason that they are clocked down, they have to be more reliable than a gaming gpu. Gaming GPUs have some parts fused off. These parts are not essential for gaming performance, and powering them off with fuses gives better…

This is key- and I think that as long as you are just using it to get triple monitor support like this guy did you will likely be ok. However, if the software you work with is going to rely on some fused out feature of the Tesla or Quadro you are just risking frying your card unnecessarily. I dont understand why users think that this is an evil practice. Its HARD to build hardware, and just like software engineers wa…

The analogy to software is a good one. Often the software is shipped full, and you unlock features as you pay for.
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