When i use my graphics chip for rendering a cycles scene it does render quicker then the regular CPU no doubt. BUT is there some way to reduce the amount of power blender consumes. Selecting the GPU will slow down or freeze the rest of all GUI related processes. It takes full capacity but i would like to do other stuff as well on my computer you know.

thanks in advance

Hi Blutarsky,

sorry, just saw this today....maybe you have fixed the problem by now, but if not...

You need to add a 2nd video card for display....it doesn't have to be NVIDIA CUDA, but it's good to have as a backup.

I have a GTX 460 for rendering, and a cheaper 210 for display.....works fine.
CUDA is 10x faster than CPU renders on my machine (PhenomII 955 CPU).

Good luck.