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

What you’re thinking about was the thing in early days of personal computers.
The games were clocked to the main processor clock, basically, running as fast as they could.
When later the processor speeds increased suddenly older games became unplayable because they were now too fast.
So, a “Turbo” button was introduced – a physical button on the PC case that will reduce the clock speed by half (usually) making older games (and some other programs) usable again.
Since then programmers learned to clock the speed of the games to “real time” clocks so they run with the same speed on all kinds of computers (if they are powerful enough, of course).