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

In applications where it’s important that a computer not go “too fast”, such as updating a game, it can be tethered to the internal clock. The program running the game will only ask for an update every so often. 60 updates a second is popular because it’s usually fast enough that humans can’t tell the individual updates apart. Even if the computer is fast enough to generate more updates than that, it won’t

Some older games played on new hardware can indeed run strangely because this safeguard wasn’t fully in place. They may end up playing at very high framerates and have processes that update every frame, producing unexpected behavior relative to when they were programmed and framerates that high weren’t possible.