The WPF components of VS will use the GPU and video memory, but there is still a lot of VS2010 that isn't WPF.

>I don't think processor is an issue anyway. It think it is video. Given the settings that completely changed performance, I think the cost of whatever thrashing around it was doing for some kind of "user experience" was just too high. NVidia gForce 8500 i gb graphics card.