I've seen Creo 2 crash from increasing the shade quality. This is becuase the increase in geometry accuracy/polygons through that setting also increases the amount of RAM required to hold the information. Increase it too much and you'll run out of available RAM and start using virtual RAM (page file) which will cause a huge hit. Increase it too much beyond your available amount and creo can crash on you. If you are working with very large models and playing with shade quality (or other options mentioned below), keep an eye on the amount of available RAM. The amount of VRAM (video ram) may also play into this but I've never played with it that much to get a feel if there are limitations, if any.
Transparancies, anti-aliasing/smooth lines, and "shade very small surfaces" in the model(s) can place a huge load on the GPU. Turning off transparency can greatly speed up large model manipulation while still increasing shade quality. Same with changing edge display quality and anti-aliasing. I've set up mapkeys to turn on/off transparencies and "shading with small surfaces" in very large models for quick manipulation on the fly. In summary you can play with increasing shade quality while decreasing or turning off the following options and keeping an eye on available ram and see if it gets you where you want:
- Transparency (turn off or set to stippled) - Options --> Model Display --> Shaded model display settings
- Edge display quality (decrease) - Options --> Entity Display --> Geometry display settings
- Anti-aliasing (decrease or turn off) - Options --> Entity Display --> Geometry display settings
- Show smooth lines (uncheck) - Options --> Entity Display --> Geometry display settings
- Shade very small surfaces (uncheck) - Options --> Model Display --> Shaded model display settings
