Discord houses many amazing features that help improve its user experience, and hardware acceleration is one of them. Discord’s hardware acceleration is an advanced technology that dedicates certain processing power from your PC’s hardware to provide better and consistent performance on the app.
Hardware acceleration uses your GPU to provide you better app experience. It is generally a good idea to keep this feature turned on if you have a strong GPU. However, if you have a medium to low-end PC and wondering if you should keep it turned On or Off, this is the right place for you.
What is Discord Hardware Acceleration?
Discord hardware acceleration is a feature in Discord that uses your computer’s CPU and GPU( Graphical processing unit) to make Discord smoother. This feature will smoothen the graphical elements of Discord, like page transitions, image qualities, etc. It will use any available GPU to provide you with better app performance.
If you have a dedicated graphics processor, it will prioritize that GPU to use the hardware acceleration feature. But if your PC doesnt have one, it’ll use the integrated graphics processor instead.
As hardware acceleration consumes a lot of computer resources, it is not ideal to use it with an integrated GPU. It will drastically slow down your PC since there may not be enough resources for system processes. If you push this feature despite your PC not being able to handle the load, it may lead to some other issues with your PC.
- Smoother application
- Better video quality when screen sharing
- Improved audio quality on voice calls
- May slow down the computer
- May cause the app to be unstable
- Lag and fps drop on video games
- Can cause screen blackouts
Should I Turn Hardware Acceleration On or Off?
The answer to this question depends on what you use your computer for and its specifications. If you’re using Discord for general purposes like talking to your friends or chatting, it should barely cause any problems. It will provide you with better performance regarding sound quality and the app’s smoothness itself.
Unless you’re facing issues like frame rate drop or stuttering, keeping it turned on will not have much negative impact. Especially if you have a high-end computer system with a strong GPU. This function will provide you with consistent app performance without causing other issues.
However, if you have a low-end PC with no dedicated graphics unit, keeping it turned off may be preferable. A dedicated graphics memory is better and faster at handling graphical rendering than your integrated GPU by a massive margin.
When hardware acceleration is turned on, it uses extra resources on your computer, which may not be enough even with a GPU. In such cases, you may experience lags or FPS(frame per second) drops while playing games or using other graphic-heavy applications.
Since this feature uses your GPU’s memory and processing power, your video games and apps will not get the necessary resources they need to provide the best performance results.
Other than causing lagging issues, it will also consume more power if you’re using a battery-powered device. But it also depends on whether or not you have a GPU. Since GPUs are more efficient at graphical processing than the CPU, they will finish rendering much faster than the CPU. Now, as the rendering finishes faster, the total power consumption is also decreased.
How to Turn On/Off Hardware Acceleration on Discord?
You can change the hardware acceleration from Discord’s user settings. But you will have to restart your app to apply these changes. Follow these steps to learn how to turn on/off hardware acceleration:
- Open the Discord app.
- Click on User Settings.
- Select Advanced from the left panel.
- Click on Hardware Acceleration to turn it On/Off.
Grey slider means the Hardware Acceleration is currently turned off. Similarly, if it is green, it means Hardware Acceleration is turned on. - Press Okay to confirm your change. It will automatically restart the app as well.
