what's the difference between shadows HIGH and VERY HIGH?

[anarky321 36]

im GPU bottlenecked in forests and the biggest gain I get is from lowering shadows to HIGH but i can't really notice what is causing such a big difference in performance, can anyone more knowledgeable about this chime in? its a huge difference like 10+ FPS

[SammyTheGamer 25]

No idea

[The_Lonely_Bandit 94]

It depends entirely on your GPU, from what your telling me I'd guess it is fairly mid-range.

I believe that it is simply a matter of balance, you have to get your settings right just for your PC. If you put your graphics too low DayZ will run primarily on your CPU instead of using both CPU and GPU. I'd say when you put shadows to "Very High" your GPU is being taxed too much, probably because of the poor optimization with the game itself however lowering it to "high" was enough to balance out the usage. 

 

[Richard III in Leicester 200]

The higher you put it seems to just add distance to how far away things render at. So higher than high just means shadows will be rendered even farther away.

[IgnobleBasterd 161]

It depends entirely on your GPU, from what your telling me I'd guess it is fairly mid-range.

I believe that it is simply a matter of balance, you have to get your settings right just for your PC. If you put your graphics too low DayZ will run primarily on your CPU instead of using both CPU and GPU. I'd say when you put shadows to "Very High" your GPU is being taxed too much, probably because of the poor optimization with the game itself however lowering it to "high" was enough to balance out the usage. 

 

What should I turn up to give the CPU some relief? Right now I have everything set on as low as possible, save for resolution which is 1280x720. I avoid larger cities because FPS drop.

Edited April 21, 2015 by IgnobleBasterd

[8bit_Survivor 93]

For me Low on all is not the best option. Changing some setting from Low to Normal actually gives me an increase in FPS. Clouds for example on Normal are fine but on Low I see FPS drop.

Play around a bit to find the right settings for you.

[Richard III in Leicester 200]

In my experience everything can go normal or high except objects and terrain which will give better frames in cities if set lower.

Can put them back up to normal or high after you leave the towns for a bit of a better view..

 

FXAA is king for clearing the blurry default imagery 

[SaveMeJebus 164]

For me Low on all is not the best option. Changing some setting from Low to Normal actually gives me an increase in FPS. Clouds for example on Normal are fine but on Low I see FPS drop.

Play around a bit to find the right settings for you.

On low most of the graphic settings will offload from the gpu to the cpu and bottleneck most people more.  If you can't turn it all the way off set it to normal or higher.  Also if you can try supersampling over fxaa, the image quality is better and it will run better on some systems.

[The_Lonely_Bandit 94]

What should I turn up to give the CPU some relief? Right now I have everything set on as low as possible, save for resolution which is 1280x720. I avoid larger cities because FPS drop.

Like I said every system is different and your settings will require specific working.

BUT I'd say leave shadows on high and try putting the other FPS hoggers to normal or high. For example object details (there is a few different settings regarding objects) and everything that doesn't hog FPS (for example terrain detail) pump it up to high or very high. Just see how it goes.

IF it is still too bad then trying turning things -down- NOT off completely. Only ever turn it off completely for last resort.

[ColdAtrophy 1850]

Also if you can try supersampling over fxaa, the image quality is better and it will run better on some systems.

 

This!

 

I started using DSR on my 970 instead of High AA and I lost nothing in framerate but gained a lot in image quality.