Shadows on increases framerate?!? Please read!

[libertine 351]

I was doing some testing because i thought it might be worth sacrificing the tiny performance hit the game seemed to have and force shadows on in the game to at least to "very low" because of the fact that it is SO much easier to see people when there are no shadows making the player and the background dark.

 

But it seems that not only isn't there a performance hit, i get a better framerate...

 

Heres my test results. I restarted the game for every test. The first column involved a few different servers, the rest were the same server. All were done staring at Zelenogorsk with same daytime. (sp?)

 

Very High    25 | 26

High            25 | 27

Normal        25 | 26 | 26

Low             25 | 23

Very Low     25 | 24 | 26

Disabled      24 | 24 | 24

 

Can some other people verify this? I ran with 3D Vision off, but loaded up an ready to go I assume it could possibly have some sort of impact even while not rendering dual views. It is damn F'ing amazing in this game btw, off the charts beautiful and as per usual only about 30% to 40% performance hit.

 

btw: If this is true, someone tell Frankie to enable his shadows :) Probably worth noting in one of his upcoming videos as i see a few people discussing the settings he chose.

 

ODD THING #2: Opening the menu (esc key) increases the framerate by 1 or 2...

 

ODD THING #3: shit can't remember

Edited December 27, 2013 by Thane

[nighhawk 41]

Thats pretty weird, but I have heard that turning up some settings can actually boost performance.

[libertine 351]

From my testing, whatever is going on in the world, or ping, or something, very well seems to have an impact on framerate regardless of whether you see it or not.

[chodeofwar 145]

shadows on high they get rendered on the gpu, shadows on normal or low they get done on the cpu. Since the game is heavily cpu bound in a lot of cases, especially in towns having the shadows rendered on the gpu can often free up a few cpu cycles, that is if you have a good enough gpu that is not already the bottleneck in your system.

[BL1P 252]

shadows on high they get rendered on the gpu, shadows on normal or low they get done on the cpu. Since the game is heavily cpu bound in a lot of cases, especially in towns having the shadows rendered on the gpu can often free up a few cpu cycles, that is if you have a good enough gpu that is not already the bottleneck in your system.

Are you sure its not above high = cpu not gpu for shadows ?

I seem to remember that for arma2 all gfx settings above high where placed on gpu except 1 which I thought was shadows. 

Could be wrong and I cant seem to find any documentation from bis on this.

[sigvatr 154]

Please read this: http://dayz.gamepedia.com/Tips_for_Getting_Started#Video_Settings_Guide

[libertine 351]

Its a good link, but i doubt anyone having framerate issues would expect for the performance to actually go up with shadows enabled.

 

btw, can anyone confirm this works on their system so i can be safer stating that this actually works in a signature link text?

Edited December 27, 2013 by Thane