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

As an ELI5, the computer game knows what speed things need to work each second (e.g. how fast the care should look, or the footballer should run). And it also knows that we humans like a faster “FPS” which is the number of frames of video it can generate each second. So on a faster computer, you want the “things done per second” to look the same as on a slower computer, but the game will reduce other things (e.g. the FPS rate may drop from 90 to 20), or ask you to reduce things that allow it to work more simply (e.g. lower quality graphics).