Of Physics Calculations and Choppy Graphics

By Gregg Housh

Delivering cutting edge graphics is a mutual responsibility. Your power supply pumps in electricity which is put to utilize by a number of components to render and animate awesome 3D graphics. Unfortunately, there is little consistency to how this workload is distributed. This can be a concern for some gamers. After building an impressive gaming rig, you find yourself facing performance trouble.

The way in which software attempts to use your hardware has a serious effect on how well it performs. New advances in software and hardware design have improved the way physics calculations are handled. This is a helpful feature for power house gaming systems that are facing processor load issues.

Physics calculations were once performed by the processor. A couple games put too much burden on this specific piece. This extra load can sometimes stress system resources in an uncomfortable manner. This will result in hitching or stuttering performance. Essentially, the game will pause momentarily but constantly. This is very irritating and maddening.

While most pcs still utilize the processor for this job, new technologies will permit users to delegate this responsibility to a graphics card. Committed physics processing units have been developed for this purpose. These components are specifically designed for handling physics calculations. This type of technology will drastically improve the performance of later games.

New software solutions have been designed that allow one of the cards in a multi-GPU arrangement to be used as a physics processing unit. Newer generation graphics cards are also outfitted with the ability to be used in this way. In a couple cases, new drivers can be downloaded that will enable this feature for people with certain hardware. While only a couple companies offer this hardware acceleration, there are also third party drivers that can enable it for cards by companies that do not provide support. However, you should always exercise caution when installing third party drivers. They can void your warranty. It's even possible to employ an unused integrated graphics card as a physics processing unit. Many gamers have just such a card wasting away on their motherboard right now.

Not all software will make use of this hardware acceleration. If you want to see a performance increase, the games you play have to be developed to take advantage of this feature. some won't. However, as time passes, more games will employ this technology. Your processor is often overworked by modern games. It is helpful to delegate a little of this less important work to a less powerful graphics card.

If you're dealing with stuttering problems during game play, you should investigate the use of a graphics card as a physics processing unit. There are a lot of modern games that put a massive burden on your processor. The jittery performance that results is disruptive. It is hard to immerse yourself in a game world when the graphics behave inconsistently. Your existing hardware might already support this feature. - 29854

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