In the Cycles Rendering tab, I toggled my device between CPU and GPU multiple times, and each time, it made no difference at all in how fast the samples for my render were calculated. What's going on? I have a good graphics card and I want to make sure Cycles is using it.
WOW! Holy shit, for YEARS I thought I was using my devices GPU, but I wasn't, I was using CPU. When I went to edit-preferences-system and flipped a switch to my NVIDIA graphics card, suddenly the rendering was 1000 times faster!
I always select GPU. On a RTX4080 SUPER so thats quick enough. Activating CPU in combination with GPU actually slows down rendering time. I leave it at dedicated GPU for rendering.