Dirty-check for HTML5 Canvas render performance The way you don't want to redraw entire canvas every frame, it only can be the "Dirty-Check" or "Dirty Matrix" algorithms. Dirty-check seems more efficient than entire redraw. but I think it depends on your render implementation. it is not necessary to use it if you are using canvas2D to render. Nearly every game has complex sprites and animation. if you use dirty-check, when a part of sprite or background map need to update, you have to figure out what is overlapping this part. and then clearRect this small area of canvas, and then redraw every sprite or map. etc, what is overlapping. It means your had to run canvas render api more times than normal render implementation because of the overlapping part. And Canvas2d render performance usually does't sounds efficient. But if you use WebGL, that maybe quite difference. even though I am not family with WebGL, I do knew that maybe more efficient. Dirty-Check should be a good Choice to match your propose.