1 How to Enable Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling in Windows 11 via the Registry2 How to Disable or Enable Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling in Windows 11 Settings3 How to Check What Graphics Card You Have or Enable/Disable Hardware Acceleration in Chrome
What is hardware accelerated GPU scheduling? Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling is a feature designed to allow better GPU scheduling between applications, theoretically improving gaming and video performance. To understand how it works, you first need to know how Windows previously did things. The OS has long offloaded some graphically intensive tasks to the GPU so that games, videos, and photo/video editing apps run smoothly. The CPU looks at all the frames that need to be rendered by the GPU, orders, and priorities them, and sends them off one by one for processing. Tasks like this are why the CPU is often referred to as the “brains” of your computer. In recent years, however, consumer GPUs have become more and more capable of performing their own tasks. When you enable hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling in Windows 11, your PC instead uses a GPUs own dedicated scheduling processor and memory (VRAM) to gather and order the data. This both frees the CPU to perform other tasks and reduces latency. Should I turn hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling on or off? The simple answer is “it depends”. Currently, testing shows that hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling has little impact on performance on high to medium-end machines. On lower-end machines, however, you may see a reduction in latency and therefore stuttering in games and videos. Unfortunately, while you’ll see improvements (however minor) in most titles, there are some reports that it can negatively impact the experience in others. Ultimately, it’s something you will just have to test with the tasks and hardware you have. If it doesn’t work out, you can always toggle it again. Before you do, you should know that hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling in Windows 10 and 11 requires a modern GPU. For Nvidia, that means a GTX 1000 or later card, and for AMD 5600 series or later. If you’re set on the requirements front, we’ll show you how to turn on or off hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling using two methods below:
