Rendering OpenGL graphics is a highly specialized, performance critical task that is suitable for hardware acceleration. The general graphics pipeline provides a good way to classify graphics hardware architectures. OpenGL is typically accelerated by performing some or all of the rasterization and transformation pipelined stages with specialized graphics hardware. Good window system support justifies hardware features other than those required for fast rendering. An evaluation of a graphics hardware subsystem for OpenGL should focus on whether the OpenGL implementation will have balanced performance for the applications intended for the hardware. Finally, the faster the graphics hardware, the more important support for OpenGL direct rendering becomes.