Windows accelerator: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 11:15, 4 February 2019

Revision as of 21:56, 17 May 2020

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{{more citations needed|date=February 2019}}

A '''Windows accelerator''' was a type of [[Graphics processing unit]] for [[personal computers]] with additional acceleration features like 2d2D [[line-drawings]], [[blitter]], [[Clipping (computer graphics)|clipping]], [[font caching]], [[hardware cursor support]], [[color expansion]], [[linear addressing]], and pattern, polygon and area fills.

The functionality marketed for [[hardware acceleration|accelerating]] the [[Microsoft Windows]] [[operating system]].

These have been superseded by multipurpose [[GPU]]s which include acceleration for [[3d3D graphics]].

Most of the Windows accelerator video cards were 2d2D capable fixed function accelerators that got 2d2D drawing commands and pixel data sent from the CPU and the fixed function run the given command which resulted in a faster drawing of the window.

The lessened burden on the CPU, combined with the smaller data stream needed for the required instructions, resulted in improved performance compared to dumb frame-buffer only based video-cards.<ref>{{cite web|title=PC Mag, Making a Choice in the area of Video technology|url=https://books.google.de/books?id=LIyy_CtozLcC&lpg=PP1&hl=de&pg=PA165#v=onepage&q&f=false}}</ref>