Decided this afternoon that it would be real fun to test out a decent chunk of low-end shaders that I can find. So here it is! (Was not as fun as I thought)
Test Setup : All results taken on a low-end laptop using Sodium + Iris.
iGPU : Intel Iris Xe.
CPU : 11th Gen Intel Core i5-1135G7 2.40GHz.
RAM : 8GB.
Render Distance : 10.
Graphics : Fast.
Most shaders were tested on 1.21.1. The ones mentioned next were tested on 1.20.1 because of version availability : Vanilla Enhanced, I Like Vanilla, Potato Shaders, Shrimple, Simply Upscaled, Super Duper Vanilla. (A few of these might support versions above 1.21.1. I've forgotten which ones specifically though)
FPS Results (Previews follow top to bottom order if image captions didn't save)
| Shader | FPS |
|---|---|
| Complementary Reimagined | 33-40 |
| FastPBR | 11-14 |
| Lumina Lite | 37-40 |
| MakeUp | 38-40 |
| Mellow | 60 |
| Miniature | 58-60 |
| Sildur's Enhanced Default | 58-60 |
| Skygleam | 60 |
| VanillaPlus | 30-33 |
| Vanilla Enhanced | 60 |
| I Like Vanilla | 29-31 |
| Potato Shaders | 27-29 |
| Shrimple | 11-14 |
| Simply Upscaled | 60 |
| Super Duper Vanilla | 29-31 |
Tier List (Going purely off of statistics)
| Tier | Shaders |
|---|---|
| Best Overall | Lumina Lite, Complementary Reimagined, Skygleam |
| Performance over Quality | Mellow, Miniature, Sildur's Enhanced Default, Simply Upscaled, Vanilla Enhanced |
| Quality over Performance | MakeUp, Super Duper Vanilla, Potato Shaders |
| Neither | VanillaPlus, I Like Vanilla |
| Probably not Low-End | FastPBR, Shrimple |
Lumina Lite and Complementary Reimagined were tested on their low preset with shadows enabled on the lowest level. Most of the others were tested with their default presets.
Results can vary severely. I know there are setups worse than mine out there, so take this with a grain of salt. You may need to tweak some settings to get what you're looking for.
Skygleam may perform worse than expected depending on some things. When I tested it out with a mod pack, its performance became around half, despite other shaders only having reduced performance by 5 or 10 FPS. (I have no idea why)
I highly advise using something like RenderScale to bleed out as much FPS as possible in general.
Critique or anything of the sorts is most definitely welcome.
by Express_Role4961