hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling: How to Enable It and Boost Your PC Performance in windows 10 and 11

How to Boost Your PC Performance with Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling

If you’re a PC gamer or a video editor, you know how important it is to have a smooth and responsive graphics performance. You don’t want to deal with stuttering, lagging, or crashing when you’re in the middle of an intense game or a creative project. That’s why you need to optimize your PC settings to get the most out of your graphics card (GPU).

One of the settings that can make a big difference in your PC performance is hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling (HAGS). This is a feature that was introduced in Windows 10 version 2004 and later, and it allows your GPU to manage its memory and tasks more efficiently, without relying on the CPU.

In this blog post, we’ll explain what hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling is, how it works, and how to enable it on your Windows 10 or 11 PC. We’ll also show you some benchmarks and tests that demonstrate the benefits of HAGS for gaming and video editing. By the end of this post, you’ll have a better understanding of how HAGS can improve your PC performance and user experience.

What Is Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling?

Hardware accelerated GPU scheduling is a feature that lets your GPU handle its scheduling of graphics tasks, instead of relying on the CPU. This reduces the CPU’s workload and latency and allows the GPU to prioritize tasks more effectively.

Normally, when you run a graphics-intensive application, such as a game or a video editor, the CPU gathers the frame data, assigns commands, and prioritizes them one by one so that the GPU can render the frame. This process involves a lot of back-and-forth communication between the CPU and the GPU over the PCIe bus, which can introduce delays and bottlenecks.

With hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling, the CPU only sends high-level commands to the GPU and lets the GPU’s scheduler handle the rest. The GPU scheduler can run multiple tasks in parallel, and allocate memory (VRAM) more dynamically. This reduces latency, improves responsiveness, and frees up CPU resources for other processes.

Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling is supported by NVIDIA (GTX 1000 series and later) and AMD (5600 series and later) graphics cards with the latest drivers. You also need to have Windows 10 version 2004 or later, or Windows 11, to enable this feature.

How to Enable Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling in Windows 10 and 11

Enabling hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling in Windows 10 and 11 is very easy. Just follow these steps:
Open the Start Menu and tap on the Settings cog icon.
In Settings, click on System and open the Display tab.
Below Multiple Displays, click Graphics Settings.
Turn on or off the Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling option.
Restart your PC.

That’s it! You’ve successfully enabled HAGS on your PC. You can also check if HAGS is enabled by opening Task Manager, going to the Performance tab, selecting your GPU, and looking for GPU Scheduling under Driver Model.

How Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling Improves PC Performance

Now that you know how to enable hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling on your PC, you might be wondering how it affects your PC performance. Does it make a noticeable difference in gaming or video editing?

The answer is: that it depends. Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling is not a magic bullet that will instantly boost your FPS or render times. It’s more of a subtle optimization that can improve your overall system stability and responsiveness.

The benefits of HAGS may vary depending on your hardware configuration, driver version, application settings, and workload. Some users may see significant improvements in certain scenarios, while others may see little to no change at all.

To give you an idea of how HAGS can affect your PC performance, we’ve gathered some benchmarks and tests from various sources that compare HAGS on vs. off. These are not definitive results, but rather indicative examples that show the potential impact of HAGS.

Gaming Performance

One of the main use cases for hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling is gaming. Gamers want to have a smooth and consistent gaming experience, with high FPS, low input lag, and minimal stuttering or tearing.

According to some benchmarks from 12, HAGS can improve gaming performance by up to 10% in some games, especially at higher resolutions and settings. For example, in Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 4K resolution with ultra settings, HAGS increased the average FPS from 54 to 60 on an RTX 2080 Ti card.

However, not all games benefit from HAGS equally. Some games may see little to no improvement at all or even a slight decrease in performance. For example, in Far Cry 5 at 4K resolution with ultra settings, HAGS reduced the average FPS from 64 to 62 on the same card.

The impact of HAGS also depends on the CPU and GPU combination. If you have a powerful CPU and a weaker GPU, HAGS may not make much difference, as your GPU is already the bottleneck. On the other hand, if you have a weaker CPU and a powerful GPU, HAGS may help reduce the CPU overhead and improve the GPU utilization.

Another factor to consider is the input lag, which is the delay between your mouse or keyboard input and the corresponding action on the screen. Input lag can affect your gaming experience, especially in fast-paced or competitive games. According to some tests from 19, HAGS can reduce input lag by up to 30% in some games, such as Fortnite and CS: GO.

Overall, hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling can improve gaming performance in some cases, but it’s not a guarantee. You may need to test it yourself on your PC and see if it makes a difference for your favorite games.

Video Editing Performance

Another use case for hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling is video editing. Video editors want to have a fast and smooth editing workflow, with quick previews, renders, and exports.

According to some tests from 17, HAGS can improve video editing performance by up to 20% in some applications, such as Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve. For example, in Premiere Pro, HAGS reduced the export time of a 4K video from 10 minutes to 8 minutes on an RTX 2070 card.

However, as with gaming, not all applications or workloads benefit from HAGS equally. Some applications may see little to no improvement at all or even a slight decrease in performance. For example, in Blender, HAGS increased the render time of a scene from 2 minutes to 2 minutes and 10 seconds on the same card.

The impact of HAGS also depends on the CPU and GPU combination, as well as the settings and codecs used. If you have a powerful CPU and a weaker GPU, or if you use CPU-intensive settings or codecs, HAGS may not make much difference. On the other hand, if you have a weaker CPU and a powerful GPU, or if you use GPU-intensive settings or codecs, HAGS may help reduce the CPU overhead and improve the GPU utilization.

Overall, hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling can improve video editing performance in some cases, but it’s not a guarantee. You may need to test it yourself on your PC and see if it makes a difference to your editing workflow.

Conclusion

Hardware accelerated GPU scheduling is a feature that can potentially improve your PC performance and user experience by allowing your GPU to manage its memory and tasks more efficiently. It can reduce latency, improve responsiveness, and free up CPU resources for other processes.

However, hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling is not a magic bullet that will instantly boost your PC performance. It’s more of a subtle optimization that can vary depending on your hardware configuration, driver version, application settings, and workload. Some users may see significant improvements in certain scenarios, while others may see little to no change at all.

To enable hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling on your Windows 10 or 11 PC, you need to have a supported graphics card (NVIDIA GTX 1000 series or later, or AMD 5600 series or later) with the latest drivers. You also need to have Windows 10 version 2004 or later, or Windows 11. Then, you can enable HAGS from the Graphics Settings menu in Windows Settings.

We recommend testing hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling on your PC and see if it makes a difference to your gaming or video editing performance. You can use benchmarks or tests to compare HAGS on vs. off for your favorite games or applications. You can also monitor your FPS, input lag, render times, export times, CPU usage, and GPU usage with tools like MSI Afterburner or Task Manager.

We hope this blog post helped you understand what hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling is, how it works, and how to enable it on your PC. If you have any questions or feedback about HAGS or PC performance optimization in general, feel free to leave a comment below. We’d love to hear from you!

Conclusion: Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling is a feature that can potentially improve your PC performance and user experience by allowing your GPU to manage its memory and tasks more efficiently. However, HAGS is not a magic bullet that will instantly boost your PC performance. It’s more of a subtle optimization that can vary depending on your hardware configuration, driver version, application settings, and workload. To enable HAGS on your PC, you need to have a supported graphics card with the latest drivers and Windows 10 version 2004 or later, or Windows 11. We recommend testing HAGS on your PC and see if it makes a difference to your gaming or video editing performance. We hope this blog post helped you understand what HAGS is, how it works, and how to enable it on your PC. If you have any questions or feedback about HAGS or PC performance optimization in general, feel free to leave a comment below. We’d love to hear from you!

Source:

Microsoft documentation on hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/hardware-accelerated-gpu-scheduling/

Benchmarks of HAGS in gaming and video editing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP2cjn89V5s

Microsoft documentation on the impact of HAGS on performance: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/hardware-accelerated-gpu-scheduling-affecting-task/7cb94d6b-997e-4258-b2df-e71fde52ad25

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