Historically, SolidWorks has not needed that much GPU memory. Most models sit comfortably within 2GB. Even the biggest assemblies only use a touch more when viewed at 4K resolution. But in order to deliver new levels of performance and open up the CPU bottleneck, GPU memory needed to play a much more important role. Open the AMD Radeon Settings application. Click on the Gaming menu option. Click on Global Settings. On the Global Graphics tab, click on GPU Workload. Graphics is enabled by default. Select the desired GPU Workload. Click Yes to restart AMD Radeon Settings for the change to take effect.
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.
![Solidworks Gpu Setting Solidworks Gpu Setting](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-giUBUcH5PdQ/UmVPD0p8arI/AAAAAAAAAL4/iDAH95OOsyA/s1600/2.png)
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.
2 - I added the desired program to the list of programs that request the NVidia card.
But with the software running when clicking on 'GPU Activity' shows no activity of the board.
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.
1 Answer
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.