Is interactive mode broken right now?

Diaspora

So, looking to do a compromise quality/faster render time gpu driven render, I decided to experiment with interactive mode and unless I'm very mistaken, it really seems to be bug city in there.

Four things stand out very quickly...

1: Rendering Convergence Ratio? Doesn't work, the renderer will just keep going and going and going.
2: Max [Render] Time (secs)? Doesn't work, the renderer will keep rendering long past that threshold, indefinitely actually.

It only seems to obey Max Samples, which, at least that's something but it's not the right tool for all situations.

3: Under optimization, refinement mode: standard, none of the bounces settings (Max Ray Bounces/Max Reflection Bounces/Max Refraction Bounces) have any apparent effect on the final image or render time, which is disappointing because bounces are one of the key areas where it should be possible to tune the balance between quality/"realism" and render time.
4: If I set refinement mode: interactive, it just flat out refuses to do any kind of shadows, apparently, which from what I'm reading in Nvidia documentation, if I understand correctly, all possible modes should have some kind of shadow casting. 

And that's just from toying around with it for about 20-30 minutes. Am I doing something wrong or is photoreal the only adequately integrated and supported mode right now?