What is hardware acceleration?

[Guest buggabee]

When speaking of hardware acceleration, what exactly is getting accelerated? I've often wondered about that. :-)Thanks,Mark

[Guest SoarPics]

Basically, hardware acceleration (as it applies to video) is the handling of advanced and complicated tasks such as rendering, pixel shading, filtering, Transform and Lighting, (to name just a few of the things that are happening on the screen in front of us) by a dedicated piece of hardware. In this example, the video card.Windows and it's DirectX API's can render graphics (referred to as software acceleration), but it is much slower than using today's modern video cards. The video card is handed the complex rendering that the CPU (thru software) would have to do. Doing so allows the CPU to do other important tasks (driving the physics engine for example).If you own a modern graphics card make sure hardware acceleration is enabled in the DirectX panel.Hardware acceleration is a bit different on the audio side. Too much of a good thing can cause problems. Many gamers set their Hardware Sound Acceleration to "Basic" in DirectX. Most don't have the very expensive audio hardware to take advantage of what the modern sound card can give them, so Basic Hardware acceleration often yields the best compromise between performance and quality. And again DirectX does a rather poor job thru it's software acceleration.All of the above applies to games. Endeavors such as video editing may be (and usually are) different in how the system is configured.Hope this helps,Greg

[Guest buggabee]

Thanks, Greg. I think I get the picture. One reason I asked this question is fs9, on my machine,(Dell 8300 w/9800 Pro) seems to run better in windowed mode (faster loading textures, FSNav stays put on my second monitor and doesn't disappear as in full screen mode, much smoother panning in spot view, etc.)with no noticable degradation in graphic quality. My reasoning was that hardware acceleration (or some component thereof) was either reduced or turned off. Beats me.Thanks,Mark

[Guest SoarPics]

Hi Mark,Fullscreen mode= 3DWindowed mode= 2DSome prefer one over the other. Nice that we have choices.Cheers,Greg