This is more of a curiosity than anything, but I've noticed that there are certain graphics based programs that seem to stress the hell out of my CPU, but leave the GPU untouched. The main annoyance is in the AutoCAD program I use for my engineering classes that is essentially used to create a 3D model of a product or part of a product. There is an option to enable high detail shadows and the like, but I primarily avoid this because it sometimes heats up my CPU just as if I was running Prime95 or something. Meanwhile my GPU remains on idle. This seems to me like a task that would be more GPU intensive, and I'd imagine that the program should have support for GPU rendering, as programs like this are one of the reasons that business graphics cards (Quadro and whatnot) exist. So, should there be a possible way to enable this program to use my graphics processor to actually do some of this graphics processing? I'm guessing the answer is "no", but I figured it was worth looking into.

I've also recently observed the same situation in Voxel, a 3D demolition tech demo I picked up with the Humble Introversion Bundle.

Here are my specs, seen the same thing on multiple computers though:

i7-2630QM 2.0-2.9GHz
1.5 GB GTX460M
8 GB RAM

Yes it's a laptop, still already runs AutoCAD a hell of a lot better than the University computers though. Also, Optimus is not available on this laptop, so it isn't an integrated v. dedicated graphics issue in that respect.

Edit: Just noticed that Autodesk Inventor does have a profile in Nvidia Inspector, but I have no idea what options would be worth enabling, any suggestions?

Quadro and FireGL graphics cards are specially configured for 3d rendering and other workstation uses. It is sometimes possible to soft-mod and Geforce into a Quadro, by configuring low-level tweaks and installing the Quadro driver package. While this isn't exactly the same as a Quadro it is fairly close.

I found this, not sure how much of a help it's going to be, I don't know if Autocad has CUDA support.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/AutoCAD-2011.html

Thanks, I'll definitely look into this, I have a GTX card, not Quadro, but I might as well see if I can do anything driver-wise.

I'm still surprised this isn't a built in option . . .

Edit: Just noticed that Autodesk Inventor does have a profile in Nvidia Inspector, but I have no idea what options would be worth enabling, any suggestions?