A quick question for a quick answer:I have installed my vendor's ICD and I initialize my window using nehe's code from tutorial 1. Do I get hardware accelaration? Thanks

That depends per you deffinition of hardware acceleration!
I would say if ogl initializes than you should have some acceleration but check one of the tutorials and head to the extensions section!

Im sure you get hardware acceleration i mean thats the point of using an api as opengl!

Atleast stuff like texture calculations and clipping will be done by the graphics card!

im not sure though you should actualy ask your vendor!
DJ

Usually this is hte way to get "hardware acceleration" as marketing people sells it.

You may want to check it out. All the GL quakes gives you the possibility to check on what they're rendering.

Another even easier way is to start up a game or a program.
If you're not accelerated it will fail to load or will be very slow. By slow I mean you're lucky when hitting 3fps.
By reference, my 800Mhz P3 does .3fps on some old games, while it does over 200fps when acceleration is enabled.
My Athlon 1800+ does .1fps at 1024x768 when acceleration is emulated thuru CPU. When the hardware-supported render path is chosen it goes far beyond 100fps.

You can always use glGetString( GL_VENDOR ) to see what you're using.