OpenGL When to use Geometry Shaders - c++

Question

I currently have a OpenGL sprite drawing class that buffers up a bunch of sprite data then dumps it with glDrawElements. The problem is, creating the sprites that go into the buffer is cumbersome as I have loads of parameters to pass into the buffer with even more redundancy for the shaders. I was wondering if I could reduce CPU load by only loading the buffer with the essentials, location, orientation, texture coordinates etc... and then let a geometry shader turn that nonsense into quads for the fragment shader.
If theres a different answer, I've added the offending method so you can see what I mean:
void Machine::draw(key num, BoundingBox loc, float angle){
SpriteSyncData* props;
VertexAttribArray* vdata;
GLushort* idata;
SpriteProperties* sprite_props;
int sliceW;
int sliceH;
sprite_props = &spriteList[num];
props = &spriteToSync[sprite_props->atlas];
props->size++;
if(props->size > props->capacity){
props->capacity += COARSE_MEM_SCALE;
props->data = (VertexAttribArray*) realloc((void*) props->data, (sizeof(VertexAttribArray)*4) * props->capacity);
props->i_data = (GLushort*) realloc((void*) props->i_data, (sizeof(GLushort)*4) * props->capacity);
}
vdata = props->data + (props->size - 1) * 4;
idata = props->i_data + (props->size - 1) * 4;
sliceW = sprite_props->location.x1 - sprite_props->location.x0;
sliceH = sprite_props->location.y1 - sprite_props->location.y0;
if(sprite_props->flags & DRAW_TILED){
vdata[0].p = QVector3D(loc.x1, loc.y0, UNIFORM_DEPTH);
vdata[1].p = QVector3D(loc.x0, loc.y0, UNIFORM_DEPTH);
vdata[2].p = QVector3D(loc.x0, loc.y1, UNIFORM_DEPTH);
vdata[3].p = QVector3D(loc.x1, loc.y1, UNIFORM_DEPTH);
vdata[0].s = QVector2D(((float) (loc.x1 - loc.x0)) / sliceW,
((float) (loc.y1 - loc.y0)) / sliceH);
vdata[0].r = QVector2D(0, 0);
vdata[1].r = vdata[0].r;
vdata[2].r = vdata[0].r;
vdata[3].r = vdata[0].r;
}
else{
vdata[0].p = QVector3D(loc.x0 + sliceW, loc.y0, UNIFORM_DEPTH);
vdata[1].p = QVector3D(loc.x0, loc.y0, UNIFORM_DEPTH);
vdata[2].p = QVector3D(loc.x0, loc.y0 + sliceH, UNIFORM_DEPTH);
vdata[3].p = QVector3D(loc.x0 + sliceW, loc.y0 + sliceH, UNIFORM_DEPTH);
vdata[0].s = QVector2D(1, 1);
vdata[0].r = QVector2D(sliceW, sliceH);
vdata[1].r = vdata[0].r;
vdata[2].r = vdata[0].r;
vdata[3].r = vdata[0].r;
}
vdata[0].t = QVector2D(sprite_props->texCoords[2], sprite_props->texCoords[1]);
vdata[1].t = QVector2D(sprite_props->texCoords[0], sprite_props->texCoords[1]);
vdata[2].t = QVector2D(sprite_props->texCoords[0], sprite_props->texCoords[3]);
vdata[3].t = QVector2D(sprite_props->texCoords[2], sprite_props->texCoords[3]);
vdata[1].s = vdata[0].s;
vdata[2].s = vdata[0].s;
vdata[3].s = vdata[0].s;
vdata[0].s_lo = QVector2D(sprite_props->texCoords[0], sprite_props->texCoords[1]);
vdata[0].s_hi = QVector2D(sprite_props->texCoords[2] - sprite_props->texCoords[0],
sprite_props->texCoords[3] - sprite_props->texCoords[1]);
vdata[1].s_lo = vdata[0].s_lo;
vdata[1].s_hi = vdata[0].s_hi;
vdata[2].s_lo = vdata[0].s_lo;
vdata[2].s_hi = vdata[0].s_hi;
vdata[3].s_lo = vdata[0].s_lo;
vdata[3].s_hi = vdata[0].s_hi;
vdata[0].o = (vdata[1].p + vdata[3].p) * 0.5;
vdata[1].o = vdata[0].o;
vdata[2].o = vdata[0].o;
vdata[3].o = vdata[0].o;
vdata[0].a = angle;
vdata[1].a = angle;
vdata[2].a = angle;
vdata[3].a = angle;
idata[0] = (props->size - 1) * 4;
idata[1] = idata[0] + 1;
idata[2] = idata[0] + 2;
idata[3] = idata[0] + 3;
}