Hardware Acceleration.?

Question

I notice in many video media playing programs I can change it so either the CPU does all the work or I can make the GPU do the work if I turn on Hardware Acceleration.

I almost never play games and watch videos at the same time so I think if I use Hardware Acceleration it may take a tad bit of stress off the CPU and put it the GPU.

I have a AMD 4800+ Dual core CPU and an EAX1950pro video card.

What do you think I should do? And what is normally better.

I have temperature monitor programs. The difference between Hardware Acceleration on and off does not effect any case temps but I only did about 10 mins worth of testing.

Also I have an antec nine hundred gaming case.

http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=15900

I have a total of 10 fans in my PC if you count the case and hardware. On a warm/hot day playing Elder scrolls IV on medium/high options for 1 hour my GPU only reaches around 60-65C. Processor gets up to about 50C. Motherboard gets to about 47 peak.

And the hard drive never rises about 40C ever. Case fans set on medium and are fairly quiet. Its a great case. As I said these temps are peak temps and on cooler days they stay much lower when gaming.

Answer 1

Definately use hardware acceleration if you can. This will smooth out video playback as well as gameplay. However, it will consume more power than normal and will require alot of cooling. Since you have a dualcore processor, it shouldn't be a problem.

Answer 2

If you have a discrete graphics card, hardware acceleration should be at FULL. The graphics card, w/ its fast on board v-ram, handle 3D graphics processing much faster and more efficiently than the CPU. Leave the cpu w/ non graphics tasks.