What happens if you disable hardware acceleration?

[v8440]

I was wondering what would happen if I disabled hardware acceleration and tried to play 3D games? This is probably a dumb question, but wouldn't doing that force the CPU to do all the graphics work? The reason I ask this is that recently, I've seen benchmarks of systems where they were limited by the performance of the video card. No matter what processor was used, or how overclocked it was, certain graphics benchmark scores stayed the same. So, what would happen if you have a pretty fast system, and you allow all graphics processing to be done by the CPU? Is it possible that the CPU could outperform the video card?

[Phil]

I think most games wouldn't work but some would use either RGB or Ramp Emulation which would probabally be missing some effects and be very slow.
I don't think any game would run faster with the cpu doing all the work even with something as old as a voodoo card as they are specifically designed to do certain types of calculations that take the cpu much longer to do.

[mrpcman]

if your went that rout, it would just run real slow and look like crap.

[JigPu]

You got to realize that the CPU is doing more than just graphics. It is doing other things at the same time (haven't seen any new games, so I'm not sure what they have), and so even if the CPU was so fast it COULD outperform the video card, it would be bogged down by the other calculations anyway, so it would just run slower.

Quick question.... Would disabling hardware acceleration make your CPU get hotter? It's doing all the graphics now too, so I would think it would increase temps a little. Anyone want to test this out and see if they get higher "full load" temps?

JigPu

[Placid]

Originally posted by v8440
I was wondering what would happen if I disabled hardware acceleration and tried to play 3D games? This is probably a dumb question, but wouldn't doing that force the CPU to do all the graphics work? The reason I ask this is that recently, I've seen benchmarks of systems where they were limited by the performance of the video card. No matter what processor was used, or how overclocked it was, certain graphics benchmark scores stayed the same. So, what would happen if you have a pretty fast system, and you allow all graphics processing to be done by the CPU? Is it possible that the CPU could outperform the video card?

Software rendering beats hardware on some higher end systems now.

[JaY_III]

but it looks like crap

[TUK101]

I would think that It would make it like my sisters old comp with intigrated graphics which are really slow and look like garbage. Not only that, but wouldnt it load down your ram as well? Which is slower than the ram on most modern day video card.

[Phil]

Originally posted by JigPu
You got to realize that the CPU is doing more than just graphics. It is doing other things at the same time (haven't seen any new games, so I'm not sure what they have), and so even if the CPU was so fast it COULD outperform the video card, it would be bogged down by the other calculations anyway, so it would just run slower.

Quick question.... Would disabling hardware acceleration make your CPU get hotter? It's doing all the graphics now too, so I would think it would increase temps a little. Anyone want to test this out and see if they get higher "full load" temps?

JigPu

I don't see how running a game in software mode would make the cpu hotter than say using prime95, they can both only use 100% of the cpu's clock cylces, instructions are instructions just because the cpu is doing graphics instead of pure maths wouldn't make it hotter

[warlok]

Originally posted by v8440
I was wondering what would happen if I disabled hardware acceleration and tried to play 3D games? This is probably a dumb question, but wouldn't doing that force the CPU to do all the graphics work? The reason I ask this is that recently, I've seen benchmarks of systems where they were limited by the performance of the video card. No matter what processor was used, or how overclocked it was, certain graphics benchmark scores stayed the same. So, what would happen if you have a pretty fast system, and you allow all graphics processing to be done by the CPU? Is it possible that the CPU could outperform the video card?
here is my opinion of this question...have you ever had an e machine..and benchmarked it ????i did my 466 with 8 meg vid and sb chipware...it was at 40 x yes the bottom of the pile...as soon as i put a video card in wala no longer the bottom of pile...you might increase video performance but the wieght has to go some where..in the case of your question the cpu will have to take the load...back to e machine ???