1. A database management data processing system comprising: a host computing system comprising at least one computer with memory and at least one processor; a graphics card with a graphics processing unit (GPU) and memory coupled to the host computing system; a database management system executing in the memory of the host computing system managing query based access to data in one or more tables of a database; and, a selective GPU utilization module executing on the at least one processor in connection with the database management system, the GPU utilization module comprising program code enabled to receive a database query in the database management system, to determine a set operations whose performance is required to process the query, to concurrently estimate both a time to complete processing of the determined set of operations of the database query in the database management system using the GPU and also a time to complete processing of the determined set of operations of the database query using a CPU of the host computing system, and based upon both concurrent estimates, to route the set of operations of the database query for processing using the GPU if the concurrently estimated time to complete processing of the set of operations of the database query using the GPU is less than the concurrently estimated time to complete processing of the set of operations of the database query using the CPU, but otherwise routing the set of operations of the database query for processing using the CPU.