will these new shadershadow updates improve performance?

[Sluggo]

<p>over the years i have had many cards ranging for my old ati x800 up to my gtx 285sli.</p><p>Enabling shaders and shadows has always hurt performance because they were rendered on the cpu.</p><p>Reading on here that shadows and shader 3.0 are being moved off of the cpu onto the gpu.</p><p>Wont this enhance performance becase the cpu resources will be freed up?</p><p>Also will sli become functional? Right now i get no performance increase from my 2nd 285</p><p>thanks</p>

[Aneova]

<p>...</p>

[Sluggo]

<p>am at work and all youtubegoogle all video sites are blocked.....thanks for the great reply</p>

[SpineDoc]

<p>You would think, but on my quad core/GTX280 system running GPU shadows has a lower framerate than CPU shadows. </p>

[Sluggo]

<p>are these new shadows live yet? i saw somewhere that said they would be live in gu52.. but i didnt see any update notes</p>

[Rorasis]

<p><cite>Aneova@Kithicor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>if you listen closely to the videos made and posted by she/he who can not be quoted. those questions were asked and answered.</p></blockquote><p>Hey, since you know the answers, why not post them instead of going out of your way to be a jerk?</p>

[Mirander_1]

<p><cite>Evilcarrot@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>are these new shadows live yet? i saw somewhere that said they would be live in gu52.. but i didnt see any update notes</p></blockquote><p>GU52 went live a couple weeks ago, and yes, the new shadows went live with it.</p><p>On my computer, the new gpu shadows actually seem to run smoother than just having cpu character shadows enabled (gpu shadows are always both character and environment shadows), so I'd say it's a big improvement</p>

[Sluggo]

<p><cite>Riliszkas@Splitpaw wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Aneova@Kithicor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>if you listen closely to the videos made and posted by she/he who can not be quoted. those questions were asked and answered.</p></blockquote><p>Hey, since you know the answers, why not post them instead of going out of your way to be a jerk?</p></blockquote><p>Like i said.. thanks for the great reply hehe.</p><p>Yea i got home and looked.. didnt even realize they were active.</p><p>I activated and my fps went from 125 up to 140. the machine has geforce 285 sli and core i7 overclocked to 4ghz.</p><p>I activated on my laptop.. fps went from 50 down to 20</p>

[Barx]

<p>If you have a good GPU, the GPU shaders should be an improvement over CPU shaders. Of course, since it is still something else to render you are going to take a performance hit going from no shaders to GPU shaders. On my computer going from none to GPU typically only costs me a few fps (I run at relatively low fps already, since I have a relatively old processor). On a laptop you are probably going to see a bigger hit... even some of the higher-end gaming laptops still can't compare with a desktop GPU.</p>

[Aneova]

<p>...</p>

[feldon30]

Seriously quit trolling. The intention is for the new Shaders to improve performance at lower resolutions but not impact framerate significantly at higher resolution. As with everything else, it will be an Option. As you found with the Shadows, if you have a laptop with a slower GPU, then GPU shadows are a poor choice for you.

[Imago-Quem]

<p><cite>Evilcarrot@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Wont this enhance performance becase the cpu resources will be freed up?</p><p>Also will sli become functional? Right now i get no performance increase from my 2nd 285</p></blockquote><p><strong><span style="color: #008000;">"Some" cpu resources will be freed up, but most benefits will come from sending less packs of data to the GPU per object rendered.  The new 3.0 Shaders send more data to the GPU per object in one packet.  The 1.0 shaders might send packs of data 10 times to the GPU just to render one object, while the new 3.0 shaders only send down data once.  The 1.0 shaders also sends duplicate data many times to the GPU while the 3.0 shaders will not be duplicating this data passing.</span></strong></p><p><strong><span style="color: #008000;">On the other hand, the 3.0 shaders will be doing a lot more work per pixel to calculate more realistic and higher resolution lighting effects, so at higher resolutions your framerate may start going down.</span></strong></p><p><strong><span style="color: #008000;">SLI is not planned to be implemented yet.</span></strong></p><p><cite>SpineDoc wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>You would think, but on my quad core/GTX280 system running GPU shadows has a lower framerate than CPU shadows. </p></blockquote><p><strong><span style="color: #008000;">If your CPU is much more powerful than your GPU then you will probably have higher framerates with the CPU shadows.</span></strong></p><p><cite>Evilcarrot@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I activated and my fps went from 125 up to 140. the machine has geforce 285 sli and core i7 overclocked to 4ghz.</p><p>I activated on my laptop.. fps went from 50 down to 20</p></blockquote><p><strong><span style="color: #008000;">Same goes here.  Likely your laptop has a much slower GPU than your desktop machine as well as a higher CPU to GPU contrast ratio.</span></strong> </p>