Acceleration of the hardware?

[Imhotep]

Been having a problem where my computer freezes when scrolling a page when on line. Phoned my tech help line who, after much research, have told me my graphics card (Intel 740 AGP) is kaput. I've now turned the Hardware graphics acceleration off, which has cured the crashing problem. I cannot notice any difference in the graphics on the games I play, can anybody explain in layman's terms what effect I should experience with the hardware acceleration off. In other words, what was it doing for me in the first place? Thanks in advance.

[TBone]

The accelaration function of your graphics card uses hardware to speed up the processing of graphics by handling some of the work itself instead of yer PC.

Unless you use software that requires accelaration (normally 3D effects and mostly in games, although some high-end graphics packages use it as well) you won't notice any difference.

If you were a sad old bugger like me, and bought some of the recent Star Wars games, you will find that they just will not run without the accelaration on. Most of the flightsims can use 3D accelaration, but it's usually off by default.

To be honest, my dear chap, your card is quite simply junk and should be replaced with a decent one asap :)

Try any Voodoo card or something from the Matrox range - they tend to work with everything !

[InFinRetirement]

I've said it before and I'll say it again that TBone fella is good.

Cept' for one point that is. FS98 and FS2000 need accerlation otherwise 'orrible things happen you won't like.

I run a Celeron 400 x 128mb RAM and a Matrox G400 - now that is some graphics card. The results are staggering, with frame rates really high.

See TBone, right again. Go for it Imhotep, you won't regret it.