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Twitch Hardware Acceleration: What is It & How to Turn It On/Off
It involves offloading tasks to specialized hardware components
4 min. read
Updated onJune 5, 2024
updated onJune 5, 2024
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Twitch is an excellent platform that has gone beyond just game streaming. It has a well-built app, and you can also use thebest browsers for Twitch streamingto access the platform.
One of its standout features is the incorporation of hardware acceleration. This feature is aimed at reducing latency and increasing throughput.
However, you might sometimes get the opposite effect on your stream, with noticeable lagging and other issues. That is why it is important to know how to turn on and off hardware acceleration for Twitch, as will show in this guide.
What is hardware acceleration good for?
Hardware acceleration is a technology specifically for improving performance. It involves offloading certain tasks to specialized hardware components in a system.
This takes off some load from the CPU and, in turn, improves efficiency and speed. In gaming and streaming, for example, an application takes advantage of a system’s GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) to take off the graphics processing from the CPU.
Is it better to turn on hardware acceleration?
All-in-all, it is advisable to always turn on hardware acceleration. This is because it improves the processing time of certain tasks spontaneously.
However, if it affects your performance, you might need to turn it off temporarily.
Does hardware acceleration affect FPS?
One of the benefits of using the hardware acceleration on streaming apps like Twitch, for example, is that it scales the performance. This usually comes in the form of an improved frame rate, which is the number of images shown per second.
With this higher frame rate comes a smoother animation. All of these help to prevent latency and lagging in streaming. So, hardware acceleration has a positive effect on FPS.
Twitch users won’t encounter any issues ever again:
Your favorite streaming platform may give you hard times when encountering various errors. You can avoid all those problems and enjoy every stream by using Opera GX - the only browser with Twitch integration.
Opera GX has some excellent features like the optimization for Twitch app, sidebar notifications with your favorite streamers, and a built-in VPN so you could change the servers and access Twitch from another location with another IP.
Opera GX
How to enable hardware acceleration on Twitch?
With these steps, the hardware acceleration for the Twitch app will be enabled.
Note that the effect is only limited to the Twitch app and not the online version. To take advantage of the hardware acceleration on the website, you need to enable it in your browser.
How do I disable hardware acceleration on Twitch?
As mentioned earlier, you should only disable the hardware acceleration feature on Twitch if it is causing problems. For instance, if it causes lagging instead of improving streaming speed, it is best to disable it.
If you’re on Opera, don’t miss our guide on how toturn off hardware acceleration in Opera GX.
Firefox is another browser with the hardware acceleration feature users use to access Twitch frequently. As with Chrome, disabling this feature on Firefox affects all other streaming and gaming tasks.
How do I speed up my Twitch stream?
You can do different things to improve your streaming speed on Twitch. If you are using a browser, you will be better served disabling unnecessary extensions and clearing your cache.
Generally, you should disable VPN, close background apps, and ensure your antivirus software is not disturbing Twitch. Lastly, don’t forget to turn on hardware acceleration if it does not negatively affect you.
Twitch hardware acceleration is overall a good to have feature. This guide has covered how to enable and disable it on different platforms. So, you can always take advantage of the feature.
IfTwitch keeps bufferingon your browser, check our guide for quick and effective fixes to get it working fine again.
Feel free to share your experience with this feature in the comments below.
More about the topics:Chrome,Twitch issues
Ola-Hassan Bolaji
Windows Hardware Expert
A Computer Engineering graduate, he has spent most of his life reading and writing about computers.
He finds joy in simplifying complex topics into simple solutions for PC users. The quality of his work and providing step-wise tested and proven solutions to PC issues are all that matter to him.
Away from computers, he is either reading or watching football!
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Ola-Hassan Bolaji
Windows Hardware Expert
He’s a Computer Engineering graduate who has spent most of his life reading and writing about computers & operating systems.
