game

3D acceleration refers to your graphics card's ability to render simulated 3D images in real time.

Since you posted this in the Windows XP section, I assume that you are running XP.
If so, your system does have a graphics system capable of rendering 3D graphics.

You can test your 3D graphics system by running DirectX diagnostics.

Click on "Run" on your start menu, and type in dxdiag
Press enter and run the tests.

If there are any errors, you may need to update drivers, or allocate more system resources for the graphics system.

The question is, is your graphics system fast enough for the software you want to run?

If you are getting 3D acceleration errors when you run a game, most likely, you need a newer, faster graphics card for the game to function.

If you have more questions, please post the specific problem along with your system specifications.

Chas

Some more info: Chas is bang on, this post is just to offer additional sources of information.

An introduction to 3D Video acceleration
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/video/3d.htm

And this site's GREAT for how ANYTHING works, just about anything you can think of is there, it's actually a really interesting and well built site:
http://howstuffworks.com

Thier 3D Graphics Accelerator info is here:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/3dgraphics9.htm