Well that's what I've always assumed, that the GPU will only 'do what's it's told to do' so to speak by the programmer during development or by the CPU during runtime.
I must ask, although The Internet is a wonderfull source of information, can anyone recommend any books that cover any or all of these subjects? I've just ordered a copy of Real-Time Rendering, Third Edition off amazon.co.uk, hopefully this will aid me in my quest to gaining a deeper knowledge of this stuff, at least in the graphics department.