How to use the potential of the GPU?

Rhino consumes only 35 watts of graphics card power, while it could potentially consume 150-160 watts. GPU usage is 11%-22% depending on the display mode.

For example, with Arctic viewport, the GPU consumes 30W, the GPU usage is around 10%, and the frame rate is 6fps. If you choose Shaded viewport: GPU consumes 35W, GPU usage is around 22%, and the speed is 30fps.

Power Draw

If your GPU only draws 35W when it’s rated to support up to 150W, that means it’s running at about 20% power.

You may be expecting that “If something takes 10 seconds, then if I get a card that’s 10x faster, then it should only take 1 second”.

This is only true if 100% of the time Rhino spent on the GPU, which is not the case. But if only 1% of the time is spent on the GPU, then the result is basically going to be the same 10 seconds.

Why? This is because the problem (or bottleneck) is not with the GPU, so speeding up the GPU, or replacing it with a much faster one, isn’t going to do a thing.

Start with the Model

Getting us a model is the best way for us to know where the bottlenecks are. You can submit a model for testing to tech support here

(Fill out the comment field in the upload with all the details, so we know what issue you are having and what version of Rhino you are using. Incomplete information can result in a delayed response from technical support.)

For example, if you are getting 3 fps Rendered mode result and a Shaded mode yields ~50 fps, that does seem concerning.

Without knowing what is in your model, we would guess that it’s probably something to do with his object management, blocks, and lighting or some combination of both. The use of multiple lights can have an abysmal performance.

You will first need to first eliminate the typical CPU bottlenecks in the file geometry and setup, before you can expect good GPU performance.