GPU

[Peter Milner]

My new computer came with a Quadro 4000 graphics card.

Is there any way of utilizing the GPU capabilities to speed rendering up?

[pun1407]

using other rendering engine, ha ha........

[George Ioannidis]

Yes, there is. Try: Octane Render, Blender Cycles, Small LUX GPU, V-Ray RT, Indigo RT, Bunkspeed, Maxwell, Thea ..... :D

[pun1407]

maxwell and vray is cpu rendering only

[George Ioannidis]

V-Ray RT with GPU support:

http://chaosgroup.com/en/2/vrayrt.html

Maxwell indeed has real time preview, but still, it is only CPU based.

[qweqwi]

VRAY RT...REAL TIME PRODUCTION...

[George Ioannidis]

None of the mentioned renderers are for use in AutoCAD. They are in majority stand-alone rendering suites with advanced connection plugins for the most popular 3D software programs like Maya, 3D Studio Max, Rhino 3D, Sketchup, Blender.... etc.

[qweqwi]

One of the best of Vray 2.0 is that you can use "Vray RT" as output, ie you can use the same parameters also Vray for RT, either CPU or GPU, this is a great advantage.
Picture this for animations, it is now a reality

[qweqwi]

vray in Max example...

[pun1407]

vray using gpu is for display only, not for production

[Peter Milner]

Hmm, not quite the answers I was looking for.

It's not a problem, it just seems a shame to have all that processing power sitting around doing nothing.

[Miguel Tano Adanes]

GPU seems to be very usefull when moving into the walkabout window. But it takes a cofee when rendering...

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Still in a wait and see mode re: GPU for the type of rendering we do, but not particularly optimistic.  So far, despite all of the advertising hype, the results for others have been very mixed when doing things like Path Tracing.  

A GPU is a very different computer than a CPU, and the way the code is written changes drastically.  In the case of your 12 core machine, it would almost certainly be a case of either/or-- the GPU would have to substitute for not supplement the CPU.  Your case would be the least likely of all to show any significant improvement.