Hardware acceleration is the process of offloading an operation of computing from your computer’s software to hardware components that are specifically designed for the task. This can improve the speed or efficiency of an application, however most often both. Hardware acceleration delegated a complex task to a hardware component that is an expert at one thing. This can reduce processing time and increase performance.

Hardware acceleration is employed in software for editing or rendering videos to shift complicated processes such as 3D rendering and complicated animations from the central processor to dedicated graphics processors. This allows the GPU to perform these tasks more quickly and efficient than the CPU, increasing overall program performance.

The same principle is employed in web browsers, with the majority now utilizing hardware acceleration by default. This results in faster loading times of pages smoother animations, and higher framerates in games. It reduces CPU usage on mobile devices, and also saves energy.

It can also have disadvantages. If your computer is struggling with dealing with the hardware High Performance Accounting acceleration (often referred to as lag) you might want to disable it. Open Chrome and type in chrome://flags your address bar. Move the Override Software Rendering slider to None. You may be asked to restart your browser. Daisy is a Senior Editor at EaseUS and has been writing for over 10 years.