Hi guys,
This whole thing about the app not reporting the graphics card correctly got me slightly worried and I was concerned that maybe, just maybe, Inventor was in fact not using the correct graphics card during testing. I thought let me build up a PC to do some testing. I wanted to confirm that even though InventorBench was reporting the on-board graphics, that the actual dedicated GPU was being used. I ran InventorBench on a system with a Quadro K620 installed and as reported by some of you as well the app reported the on-board graphics card. I recorded the test result and then rebooted the PC into BIOS mode and disabled the on-board graphics at hardware level. Booted back into Windows 10 and then started InventorBench again. This time the graphics was reported correctly as the Quadro K620. I ran an extensive test again and the score was within 1% compared to the previous score when the graphics card was reported to be the on-board one.
Ok so that has put my mind at ease about that topic. So for any of you having the same problem, just reboot and disable the on-board graphics in the Bios and you should not see it represented any longer.
Here are my results comparing the difference between the GeForce GTX 780 and Quadro K620 on the same system. As you can see the graphics card makes a huge difference right!?!? Compare the graphics scores only.


Anyway so, as a second point, this got me thinking some more about the overall perception I think many may have that the CPU has the biggest impact on Invetor’s performance. Even though this may or may not be true, I just want to point out something. I started thinking about the way InventorBench is using the results to create the overall IPI value and I feel that maybe the way it’s currently done is a bit biased towards the CPU. It’s not really an issue but its more about how the test results are calculated relative to each other. You see, the “Modeling Test” and the “Drawing Test” is actually CPU based tests and the faster your CPU the better your PC will do in these two areas right. Only the “Graphics Test” is aimed at testing the GPU. So currently the IPI is calculated on the total time of all these tests and because there are two CPU tests influencing this result, it may seem that changing the CPU for a faster one has the biggest effect on your PC’s performance if you know what I mean. I mean these are all legitimate tests where the modelling test will test the raw power of one CPU core and the drawing test will again show off the power of multiple cores so the more cores the better the result will be here.
Also in the near future I want to include a rendering test which again is a CPU based test and will also contribute to the overall IPI score of course. This will more so overshadow the contribution the graphics card has on the IPI score.
Anyways I am just mentioning this to see what you guys take is on this. I think a good idea is to develop the graphics based tests some more as well so that it contributes some more to the overall result and maybe implement some sort of weighting.
Cheers