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

Funny story. I had a floppy disk game from the 90s, it was sort of like a roller coaster tycoon. It was made to run on MSDOS. Well, one time I got it to work on a computer running Windows XP, and holy cow, the game ran in super fast turbo mode. Like, hysterically fast.

Anyways, every computer has a built in clock circuit. Modern games are made to sync to the clock, so no matter the performance specs of the computer, the game should run the same speed. A good test to confirm is to install a classic game, like Warcraft 3 or StarCraft, and see.