3D Hardware Acceleration Required?

I've seen that requirement on some games. What is 3D Hardware Acceleration, how do you know if you have it, and if you don't, how do you get it?

It's basically graphical calculations being performed on your video card (GPU), rather than in software run using your general processor (CPU). It's much faster to perform specific instructions on dedicated hardware, so it means that we can play advanced looking 3D games.

Every graphics card for the last 10 years will have some form of 3D acceleration (in your case the ATI Radeon HD 5770 supports up to DX11).

Aha, so DirectX is the way of measuring/rating it? Got it. I'm familiar with the DirectX terminology, so that's what I needed to know.

Thank you very much Ian,

Kind of, DirectX is a grouping of the graphical functions (and audio) - so DX11 includes newer features that modern graphics cards support (cards from a few years ago may only be DX9/10 capable).

What had me confused was the "3D Hardware Acceleration".
I thought it was some kind of new, special graphics card that I didn't have. After talking to you I bought one of the games I had referred to and it runs fine on my computer.
Thanks again.