Are shadows more CPU or GPU intensive?

Post by **RedAlley** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 3:21 am

Shadows really seem to bring my fps down A LOT on my 2.8ghz p4, 1 gig ram, x850 pro... when I turn shadows off the game still looks great and I get an extra 10-15 fps. What I want to know is... are shadows cpu or gpu intensive? I'm thinking CPU... what do you guys think?

Post by **Justin Thyme** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 3:55 am

I think it is mostly CPU, at least for D3/Q4 engine. I turn shadows off as well for my AMD2600, 1.5GB RAM, nVidia 6600 w/256. I can go from 800x600 to 1024x768 without significant change in FPS.

The D3 engine, even moreso than any of the previous id based engines, really requires some config tweaking well above and beyond the Low, Medium, High and Ultra settings via menu.

Post by **AmIdYfReAk** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 5:11 am

*cough* from my not to intune knolage with this, i think the Shadow's need to be Cycled through the Cpu, then rendered in real time through the videocard.

so i would feel that it fits both hand in hand, persionally i turn them off.. useless feature anyway

Post by **^misantropia^** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 11:58 am

IIRC, it depends somewhat on your video card and drivers: some have better and more extensive support for hardware shaders, which speeds up shadowing, than others. But the CPU is definitely involved quite a bit.

Post by **MKJ** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 2:27 pm

i personally turned off itemshadows in the console. playershadows are still there then.. it helped me a few times already :icon14:

Post by **duffman91** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 1:27 am

I'm preety sure they use an algorithm to display shadows as opposed to a GPU feature. So in essence, yes, its CPU dependent.