Can a device name in Windows be customed

[Katie]

Inspired by a not old question: https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/gtx-1080-to-lower-gtx-10xx-rename-my-gpu.258385/

Is there an existing way shared on the Internet of allowing users to customise hardware information to certain extent? More specifically in this case, is there a way to alter a Maxwell Graphics Card with its name, e.g. GTX 980Ti to Quadro M6000. From previous observation, the Maxwell Bios Tweaker never has the capability to 'tweak' Bios identity information, nor do most users would need to. But stepping back, from the OS point of view, is it possible for Windows to see a card with different name? Sometime, it can be beneficial or convinient for a particular software development support or recognition.

Sadly, that old discussion were immediately shifted from origional technic focus to a moral debate, which neither help understanding on seekers' or answerers' side. But for some reason, it would be really delightful to see how much potential a graphic card can reach that we users can extract from DIYs and customization.

 

[W1zzard]

Yeah, the device name in Windows can be changed easily, the name string is stored in the driver INF files, not in the card/GPU/BIOS

 

[Assimilator]

Sometime, it can be beneficial or convinient for a particular software development support or recognition.

But for some reason, it would be really delightful to see how much potential a graphic card can reach that we users can extract from DIYs and customization.

Renaming a device in Windows isn't going to achieve anything, because no program uses the name for anything, they use the hardware identifier or (far more likely) the capabilities reported by the drivers... which query the hardware directly to determine those capabilities.

So no, renaming your GeForce to a Quadro is not going to magically make software that requires a Quadro work, sorry.

 

[birdie]

I guess this image is self-explanatory. There's no need to edit INF files at all - fire up regedit and change the "FriendlyName" after granting yourself the permissions to edit this registry key.

But stepping back, from the OS point of view, is it possible for Windows to see a card with different name?

It's all quite murky here. What exactly do you want to achieve? Make Windows drivers use the device differently? That's impossible - they use PCI-E/USB ID (VENDOR/DEVICE/SUBSYSTEM). If you just want to see a different name in Device Manager - that's possible and I've showed how.

 

[Katie]

Yeah, the device name in Windows can be changed easily, the name string is stored in the driver INF files, not in the card/GPU/BIOS

Thanks for the affirmative answer. I found there were few registry methods changing CPU or GPU names but they were rather temporary with no real effect. Even some claimed 'permanent', it is often the matter of bouncing back and redoing the name changing on each system refreshing.

Renaming a device in Windows isn't going to achieve anything, because no program uses the name for anything, they use the hardware identifier or (far more likely) the capabilities reported by the drivers... which query the hardware directly to determine those capabilities.

So no, renaming your GeForce to a Quadro is not going to magically make software that requires a Quadro work, sorry.

Manys thanks for the explain. I have guessed that changing a string value of a name does no real effect. It is good to know that no program is just simply determing the names and hardware identifier does the work. Just have been wondering if there would be software tools actually touches these fields.

On a soft-mod scenario, it is not hard to get a Quadro driver working for a GTX card though I am not sure how the differently designed driver identifies and operates in this way. But, depending on which driver version, Quadro driver seems performing decent stability and efficiency on GTX card. At this point, if the card name can be also changed somehow (not necessarily device ID or hard-mod), it would be interesting to see how software would react. For example, the 10-bit colour display from Photoshop, the performance warning (on demanding a professional card) in AutoCAD, will these popular requests being fulfilled to some degree?

I guess this image is self-explanatory. There's no need to edit INF files at all - fire up regedit and change the "FriendlyName" after granting yourself the permissions to edit this registry key.



It's all quite murky here. What exactly do you want to achieve? Make Windows drivers use the device differently? That's impossible - they use PCI-E/USB ID (VENDOR/DEVICE/SUBSYSTEM). If you just want to see a different name in Device Manager - that's possible and I've showed how.

Thank you for the image. It is clear and quite a straight-forward way messing with the registry. I came across those 'friendlyname' and 'Enum' registry values. They are quite temporary changes, and as you implied, not much useful in reality. Practically, the thing I can most think of wanting to achieve is by changing a Graphic Card name to bypass some software restriction/notification (as I have mentioned previously like 10-bit colour in Photoshop and performance notification in AutoCAD or Revit). I understand it won't add new features the device does not originally have, but who knows, there might be a little bit magic?

Talking about nVidia Graphic cards, seems like it all comes to the Maxwell architecture and the afterwards that there has been increasing limits of what you can do about your cards. Before, there were quite few tools like Nibitor and other stuff which can simply even change the Device ID. Those were quite interesting stories but sadly not continued. There were overclock communities, while this might be less of faster performance issue.