Hardware acceleration is a powerful feature that can improve the performance of various applications by offloading tasks from the CPU to specialized hardware components like the GPU or other accelerators. Enabling hardware acceleration can enhance your experience in tasks like gaming, video streaming, video editing, and browsing. If you want to take advantage of this feature but aren't sure how to turn it on, here's a comprehensive guide.
What is hardware acceleration?
Hardware acceleration refers to the process of moving some software running on the CPU to idle hardware resources, which can be graphics cards, sound cards, graphics processing units (GPUs) or special devices (such as artificial intelligence accelerators), to optimize resource usage and performance. Most browsers also have acceleration features.
CPU is the core of all computer systems. It is designed to manage all tasks, but managing all tasks is not efficient. Therefore, video encoding, decoding, and graphics rendering can be performed on dedicated devices such as GPUs. Hardware acceleration offloads day-to-day tasks from the CPU to specially designed hardware that can perform the work more efficiently.
Why Should You Turn On Hardware Acceleration?
Turning on hardware acceleration can offer several advantages, including:
Improved performance in graphics-heavy applications (e.g., games, video editing, and 3D rendering).
Smoother video playback for streaming services and media applications.
Reduced CPU usage, allowing your system to handle multiple tasks without slowing down.
Better efficiency and power management, especially for laptops.
Now that you understand the benefits, let’s explore how to enable hardware acceleration in different scenarios
How to Turn On Hardware Acceleration in Different Applications
For Google Chrome (Web Browser)
Google Chrome uses hardware acceleration to improve web browsing, especially for tasks involving rich media content like videos, games, and animations.
Here’s how to enable it:
Open Google Chrome.
Type chrome://settings/ in the address bar and press Enter.
Scroll down and click on Advanced to expand the settings menu.
Under the System section, find the option that says Use hardware acceleration when available.
Toggle the switch to On.
Restart your browser for the changes to take effect.
For Mozilla Firefox (Web Browser)
Mozilla Firefox also supports hardware acceleration, which helps improve video playback and other media-rich content.
To enable hardware acceleration in Firefox:
Open Firefox.
Click on the three horizontal lines in the upper-right corner and select Options.
Scroll down to the Performance section.
Uncheck the box that says Use recommended performance settings to reveal more options.
Check the box next to Use hardware acceleration when available.
Restart Firefox for the changes to take effect.
For Windows 10/11 (System-wide)
Windows 10 and 11 can leverage hardware acceleration for various tasks, including video playback and certain UI elements. Enabling this feature can make your system feel more responsive, especially when working with media.
To enable hardware acceleration for your entire system:
Right-click on the desktop and select Display settings.
Scroll down and click on Graphics settings under the Multiple displays section.
Select Classic app or Universal app, depending on what you want to enable acceleration for.
Browse to the app you want to configure and select it.
After selecting the app, click on Options and select High performance.
Click Save to apply the settings.
For Adobe Photoshop (Graphics Software)
Adobe Photoshop uses hardware acceleration to speed up image rendering and editing tasks.
Here’s how to turn it on in Photoshop:
Open Adobe Photoshop.
Go to Edit > Preferences > Performance.
Under the Graphics Processor Settings section, check the box that says Use Graphics Processor.
If you want to tweak additional settings, click on Advanced Settings.
Click OK to apply the changes.
For Video Players (e.g., VLC Media Player)
Video players like VLC Media Player can use hardware acceleration to offload video decoding tasks to the GPU, improving playback performance.
To enable hardware acceleration in VLC:
Open VLC Media Player.
Go to Tools > Preferences.
In the Simple Preferences window, click on the Video tab.
Scroll down to the Output section and select the appropriate hardware-accelerated output module (e.g., Automatic, Direct3D).
Click Save to apply the changes.
For Gaming (e.g., NVIDIA and AMD Graphics Cards)
For gaming applications, hardware acceleration (via the GPU) is essential to achieve high frame rates and smooth gameplay. Most modern games use GPU acceleration by default, but you can tweak your graphics settings to make sure hardware acceleration is active.
For NVIDIA GPUs:
Right-click on the desktop and select NVIDIA Control Panel.
Under 3D Settings, ensure that your preferred GPU is selected as the default renderer.
Adjust settings for each game to enable maximum performance.
For AMD GPUs:
Right-click on the desktop and select AMD Radeon Settings.
Go to Gaming and select the game you want to configure.
Adjust settings to enable hardware acceleration and ensure the best performance for gaming.
Troubleshooting Hardware Acceleration Issues
Sometimes, enabling hardware acceleration may cause issues such as crashing, lagging, or even visual artifacts, especially if your GPU is outdated or not compatible with certain applications. Here's what you can do if you run into problems:
Update your drivers: Ensure your GPU drivers are up-to-date. Outdated drivers may cause compatibility issues with hardware acceleration.
Turn off hardware acceleration: If problems persist, try turning off hardware acceleration in the application or system settings to see if that resolves the issue.
Check system specifications: If your system has limited GPU power or older hardware, hardware acceleration may not offer the expected benefits.
Key Uses of Hardware Acceleration
1. Artificial intelligence data processing
An increasing number of hardware accelerators are being integrated into systems on chips (SoCs) to support various AI applications. Due to the complexity of artificial intelligence, running artificial intelligence first requires hardware acceleration. AI accelerators are designed to accelerate AI work. They perform these operations with an efficiency that traditional CPUs cannot achieve.
2. Audio processing
Some PC audio adapters feature hardware acceleration, which helps perform hardware mixing of any number of audio files being processed by the audio driver.
Hardware acceleration improves audio processing performance by freeing the CPU from audio mixing work.
3. Encryption hardware acceleration
The encryption process can be expensive when done using software. Hardware accelerators can perform these operations to improve performance and reduce usage costs. Crypto hardware acceleration refers to the use of hardware to perform encryption functions, and generally hardware acceleration is faster than software acceleration.
4. Video encoding and decoding
Upgrading our videos to higher resolutions more than doubles the workload on the CPU, resulting in CPU overload, throttling, high CPU usage, and process interruptions. Leverage the huge parallel processing capabilities of the GPU to successfully reduce CPU processing time and power consumption.
5.AI drawing and modeling
Currently we are using computer design programs (such as modeling, drawing tools, etc.) to perform basic drawing and modeling processes. These modeling and drawing operations are very computationally demanding. Therefore, after we model and draw, we need to wait for a long time for computer processing before we can finally get our finished product, which increases our time cost. Hardware acceleration can greatly reduce computer rendering time and improve our work efficiency.
When to use hardware acceleration?
We may need to use hardware acceleration when we encounter the following situations:
· Long application load times: When more GPU processors are available for processing, more tasks can be completed simultaneously, which increases efficiency and reduces the time required to obtain results and responses.
· Slow speed: Multiple GPUs on a computer system can handle different jobs individually and complete calculations faster than using just one CPU processor.
· Excessive power consumption: Systems using GPUs can reduce power consumption because it does not require all components of the system to be running at the same time.
Advantages of hardware acceleration
Hardware accelerators have the undisputed advantage of making computing operations more efficient and productive. The main purpose of hardware acceleration is to minimize CPU overload and memory consumption. This can make applications run faster and more efficiently, free up bandwidth, and improve system reliability and reliability.