If a computer is powerful enough, how does it know not to play videos or perform logic for games at a faster speed?

Question

I don’t know if I’m explaining this right…
A computer can run logic at some speed based on how powerful the components of it are, so if it can perform the logic of something, for example, movement in a game, how does it know how much should be done based on its power, instead of essentially running in “fast-forward” or conversely in slow motion?

In: 1307

Answer 1

They have a clock in them, so in game code you can just wait for specific amounts of time.

For old systems that don’t have clocks in them, the processors would run at a known fixed rate, so you would write your program knowing how many processor cycles have passed at any given point, and thus, know the time.