I think although the effect is the same, it's not as justified. For one, you can distribute a patch to people who do not have to do any "labor" to get the same effect as the hardware mod. You can't distribute a hardware mod to others. Also, with software I feel there is an implicit trust agreement. Photoshop is just a different series of 1s and 0s than GIMP and both are just a different sequence of 1s and 0s than what exists on the empty, fragmented parts of your hard drive. However as a society we have agreed to pay for our copy of these binary sequences and this is the entire software market. We've also, mostly, agreed not to give the software we buy away to everyone else just because it's technologically possible.

However I don't think the same social contract exists for hardware. It might be part of the hacker spirit but hardware modifications are encouraged and often celebrated. People who make their BMWs drive faster than they should or make Blu Ray lasers into lightsabers are applauded in a much different way than software pirates. Again, I can't really explain the cultural distinction but I'm very aware of its existence and that's why I can't see any objection to this Nvidia hack.