Methods and apparatuses for providing hardware acceleration of a web browser are disclosed. In one embodiment, a method of operating a web browser on a computer system includes analyzing a data stream having a plurality of fragments. The method further includes determining what fragments of the data stream should be rendered for storage into separate backing stores. The method further includes rendering the fragments into raster images intended for hardware acceleration. The method further includes storing the raster images in the backing stores located in a graphics processing unit.