On all computers with Windows installed we have hardware acceleration, a system function that allows programs and the system itself to use the capabilities of the dedicated video card or the integrated video chip (on laptops) to perform tasks and improve performance . Hardware acceleration is mainly used to watch movies in high resolution but also to play video games and to use advanced graphics programs. On some computers, especially slower ones or with not particularly recent hardware, hardware acceleration could lead to sudden slowdowns, making difficult to watch streaming content. So if we often use the computer on the Internet to watch streaming video and we notice numerous slowdowns, in this guide we will show you how to disable hardware acceleration on Windows to optimize video streaming, showing you the steps to be taken in the system settings and inside of the main web browsers.
How to disable hardware acceleration on PC
In the following chapters we will show you how to disable hardware acceleration directly inside the system (not entirely applicable) and how to disable it for every modern web browser (much easier to apply).Disable hardware acceleration on Windows 10
Windows 10 was created to take advantage of hardware acceleration, in fact all PCs that have the minimum requirements to run this system should have acceleration already active. If we notice some slowdowns when we play a video on the Internet (especially on computers with 4-5 years on the shoulders), we can improve the situation by deactivating all the Windows graphic effects, so as to reserve the (little) hardware acceleration only for videos and programs. that require it. To do this, simply right click on the Start menu in the lower left, press on the System item, click on the top right on the System Information item and, in the new window that will open, click on the item Advanced system settings .In the window that we will see on the screen, go to the Advanced tab, press the Settings button under the Performance section and, in the Visual Effects tab, we place a check mark on the Adjust item in order to obtain the best performance and, to maintain a minimum of effects for the outlines of characters and windows, we enable (in the list below) only the items Show window content during the dragging operation, Smooth the corners of the characters on the screen and Show previews instead of icons .
Press down on Apply and then OK . The operating system will exploit hardware acceleration to the bare minimum, leaving the graphics resources to the programs that request it.
If we notice that even so the hardware acceleration slows down the videos and the execution of the graphic programs, we can adopt a much more aggressive strategy to disable the hardware acceleration on Windows, that is to disable the video card or the video chip . To do this, right click on the Start menu at the bottom left, press on Device Manager, expand the item Video cards and right click on the elements present, so you can press on the Disable device item.
Once the device is deactivated, we restart the PC for the changes to take effect. From now on Windows 10 will run in reduced graphics mode, without any kind of active graphic effect and without hardware acceleration.
NOTE : some model processors have an integrated video chip inside them which can be used for graphic effects and hardware acceleration; to disable it we will have to act from the BIOS / UEFI .
Disable hardware acceleration in web browsers
If we do not want to give up the graphic effects of Windows or the video card present on the computer, we can disable hardware acceleration directly from web browsers, so as to optimize the viewing of streaming videos, which will only use the CPU for rendering.On Google Chrome we can disable hardware acceleration by clicking on the three dots at the top right, selecting the Settings menu, clicking on the Advanced item and scrolling until you find the item Use hardware acceleration when available, from which we must remove the check mark (we will be asked to restart the browser to make it effective changes).
On Mozilla Firefox we can disable hardware acceleration by clicking on the three horizontal lines at the top right, pressing on the Options menu and scrolling in the new window until you find the Performance section; from it we remove the check mark from the item Use the default settings and repeat the action also on the item Use hardware acceleration when available .
Also in this case we restart the browser to make the changes effective.
On Internet Explorer we can disable hardware acceleration by opening the Start menu at the bottom left, looking for the Internet Options item, going to the Advanced tab, looking for the Accelerated Graphics item and checking the Use software rendering rather than GPU rendering item .
To confirm the changes we click on the Apply and OK buttons, then we restart the PC.
On Edge it is not possible to disable hardware acceleration, but reducing the graphic effects or disabling the video card as seen in the previous chapter will also improve the fluidity of Edge on some rather old computers.
Conclusions
Hardware acceleration can bring some problems with older computers, so it is always convenient to know the tricks to disable it from the system or from the single program (in this case browsers). Other programs also have an item dedicated to hardware acceleration in the settings: if we notice any difficulties when starting or using the program, we find this item and disable it.If we need to increase hardware acceleration for browsers or programs that require a lot of 3D resources, we recommend you read our guides on How to enable GPU acceleration on Chrome and Firefox to better view sites and videos and How to dedicate RAM to video card .
If we have a fixed PC, we can remove the old video card and choose a new one, following the suggestions proposed in our article on How to choose the video card for PC graphics .
