Forcing GPU Rendering Option

Small_law

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I wanted to see if anyone was enabling the "force 2D hardware acceleration in applications" setting in the developer options menu and how the experience has been. For me, the performance of some apps like Twitter really improves. Others like the News and Weather widget/app seem to stutter when I have it turned on.

Is it better in terms of system performance to leave it enabled, or should I forget about it altogether? And what exactly is going on when it is enabled?
 

hyperdude

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I've noticed apps like Twitter and Facebook are much improved with the option turned on as well. So far I haven't noticed anything working worse.
 
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jerrod6

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Well the gpu is sitting there just to render graphics instead of the cpu, perhaps it will use less battery..... ???.....

I thought apps had to be coded or compiled so that they send the graphics through a gpu and if so the setting probably won't make any difference if the app is not set up for gpu rendering, either that or the app will not work well or crash...but ...I dunno.
 
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hyperdude

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Well the gpu is sitting there just to render graphics instead of the cpu, perhaps it will use less battery..... ???.....

I thought apps had to be coded or compiled so that they send the graphics through a gpu and if so the setting probably won't make any difference if the app is not set up for gpu rendering, either that or the app will not work well or crash...but ...I dunno.
I think checking that option makes the system act like every app has the hardware acceleration config enabled, which certainly makes some apps work more smoothly. I believe in most general cases you won't notice much of a difference, not on this hardware.
 
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Small_law

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it makes a world of difference with Twitter, but ive notice some stuff gets wonky. News and weather will crash if you try to see the temperature by time of day in the weather window for example. But if that's the only negative, i'll keep it on.
 

dookie.

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Interesting...

I'd turned this on the first time I went through Settings (hey, why not) and then promptly forgot it. Since then, I've had a few apps that wouldn't work (Epicurious, Tapatalk, local news channel app), and they all crash the same way...opening screen is sort of visible but small and pushed off screen to the left, right side of screen totally black, app non-responsive but the phone is OK and the app can be killed.

Thought I'd just wait for an ICS-compatible update for them, but I just turned off this GPU-render option and all of the previously troubled apps work fine...
 

hyperdude

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Oct 19, 2011
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Interesting...

I'd turned this on the first time I went through Settings (hey, why not) and then promptly forgot it. Since then, I've had a few apps that wouldn't work (Epicurious, Tapatalk, local news channel app), and they all crash the same way...opening screen is sort of visible but small and pushed off screen to the left, right side of screen totally black, app non-responsive but the phone is OK and the app can be killed.

Thought I'd just wait for an ICS-compatible update for them, but I just turned off this GPU-render option and all of the previously troubled apps work fine...
I had the same thing happening! I must have figured out it was the forced GPU rendering that caused it because I haven't had the problem since...
 

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