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Firstly I am a Brazilian and any information in the images will be in Portuguese.

Anyway, I have an NVIDIA GeForce 840M video card and an Intel Graphics video card in my notebook.

The drives are up and running normally.

Only I have a problem: I'm using CAD software (SolidWorks) that is not communicating with the NVidia card.

I have already done the following:

1 - Open the NVidia Control Panel and locate the desired software so that the NVidia video card can be used by this software.

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2 - I added the desired program to the list of programs that request the NVidia card.

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But with the software running when clicking on "GPU Activity" shows no activity of the board.

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Would anyone have any info on what I need to do so this software can use NVidia card features?

Note: I've tried using this feature but have not yet succeeded.

LCarvalho
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  • if you go to the Global settings (for the Base profile) in the NVidia control panel, and set "OpenGL rendering GPU" to always use the NVidia GPU (vs. Auto-select), does Solidworks use the GPU? – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Apr 27 '17 at 19:47
  • I did this procedure, but the software was not recognized by the video card. This software can not use the NVidia card – LCarvalho Apr 27 '17 at 20:54
  • Does solidworks use the GPU if you right click the program and choose Run with Graphics Processor > High Performance NVIDIA Processor? – Stese Apr 28 '17 at 13:08
  • Also, instead of selecting solidworkds from the list, when it is running, check Task Manager for the exact *.exe that SolidWorks is using to run, and then, Add this as a custom *.exe instead... – Stese Apr 28 '17 at 13:09
  • @Steven Davison I'll try this and I'll soon return the result – LCarvalho Apr 28 '17 at 13:13
  • I have to agree with what the @Tom R wrote. it was not possible any sign in control panel. – LCarvalho Apr 30 '17 at 17:43

1 Answers1

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I haven't used SW2016 yet, but for any other version that I've been using in the past 10 years, I never saw much activity on the graphics card GPU.

The main reason, to the best of my knowledge, is that SolidWorks is not using the GPU so much (except for the screen rendering), and is using the CPU for all the geometry calculation (shape generation, selection, Boolean operation between solids and so on).

Still, SolidWorks is using your graphic card in the shaded rendering and you can verify that by comparing the performance of you computer using the default option and the software rendering: you can force the use of software OpenGL in the performance tab of the system options (only at SolidWorks startup with no part open). You can also rotate your model crazily and might notice some activity on the graphic card.

One other check you can do to ensure that the graphic card is properly used is to change the AntiAliasing setting: in your first screenshot you can change the setting at the very bottom (Anti-aliasing - FXAA) to 4X. You will see that lines and shapes are now smoother in SolidWorks, but it will affect the icons as well and performance.

In my experience the only time I have activity on the GPU is when I'm using a CUDA application (Ansys FEA using the High Performance Licence for instance), but not with SolidWorks.

Hope this helps.

Tom R
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