Minecraft: Best Low-End Shaders (2024)

Highlights

  • Performance-friendly shaders like Complementary Shaders offer customizable settings to improve visuals.
  • DrDestens MCShaders shines with realistic water effects.
  • Look into ultra-fast shaders like MakeUp for impressive shadows and light effects.

Shaders are a wonderful way to make Minecraft look more realistic or fantastical through the use of lighting, sun shafts, reflections, and other complicated, oftentimes resource-sapping calculations and graphical enhancements. Thankfully, there are more performance-oriented shaders available that won't light your GPU or CPU on fire.

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If you're running an older system or had to compromise with some of the lower-end, modern GPUs on the market, all hope is not lost; give these performance-friendly shaders a try and fiddle with the settings a bit before you commit to investing in higher quality hardware. Even the most lightweight shaders look better than vanilla, after all.

Please double-check any shader you're interested in trying out for any dependencies or potential incompatabilities with performance-based mods you might be running.

8 Complementary Shaders - Reimagined

Minecraft: Best Low-End Shaders (2)

While you might have a tough time running the default settings for this shader, you should be alright cranking the general settings preset down to low. If your rig is still struggling, there are plenty of in-depth, customizable settings you can fiddle around with.

Alternatively, you could look around at some cute texture packs that have a lower pixel density format, like eight-by-eight or four-by-four, to help improve performance, or at the very least make some room for the shader and keep performance the same.

7 DrDestens MCShaders

Minecraft: Best Low-End Shaders (3)

From custom sky gradients, directional lightmaps, and improved dynamic lightmaps, to physics-based rendering, water effects, and depth of field, DrDestens MCShaders packs a lot of features into a beautiful, realistic experience. Heck, you can even choose between TAA and SSAO rendering settings.

The biggest improvement you'll likely notice first, though, is how good the water looks. If you find the high seas calling your name, and you're yearning for a boat-based adventure, this shader would pair nicely with some of the best ocean mods Minecraft has to offer.

6 MakeUp - Ultra Fast Shaders

Minecraft: Best Low-End Shaders (4)

It's largely baffling how good this shader actually is; how can it look so good yet retain so much performance? Blocks cast shadows, iron blocks look shiny and reflect the sun's intensity straight into your eyes, and you can practically feel the water's depth through your screen.

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Sticking with the popular trend of making low-end shaders modular, you can turn each setting on or off individually to suit your computer's unique needs and limits. The only downside is that this shader might run poorly on AMD graphics cards in comparison to Nvidia or Intel GPUs.

5 FastPBR Shaders

Minecraft: Best Low-End Shaders (6)

If you know a thing or two about physics-based rendering, you likely picked up on the "PBR" part of this shader's name, which utilizes PBR atmospherics with minimal hits to performance, which is about as welcome as the magnificent sky box it provides; just look at those clouds!

Some restrictions to keep in mind, however, are that this shader doesn't support OptiFine, relies on Iris version 1.6 or newer, and requires a graphics card or integrated graphics that support OpenGL 4.3 or higher for 2D and 3D rendering calculations.

4 UShader

Minecraft: Best Low-End Shaders (7)

UShader, although it can appear a bit "hazy" compared to other shaders, looks incredibly realistic, especially during the daytime in forests and heavily wooded, mountainous regions. If you're worried about performance, rest assured this shader runs on GPUs as old as the GTX 1050 or the RX 560.

You can use Optifine or Iris, whichever you prefer, as long as they are at least as recent as versions 1.16 or 1.5.0, respectively. Sadly, if you're relying on integrated graphics, specifically Intel HD 5000 series or older, you probably won't be able to run this shader.

3 Chocapic13's Shaders

Minecraft: Best Low-End Shaders (8)

This shader is not only highly configurable and tinker-friendly, but also suitable for those of you choosing your very first shader pack, since the download page offers a handy table of recommended settings, categorized from low to extreme based on their performance impact.

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Ultimately, Chocapic13's Shader does its best to squeeze as much quality out as possible while preserving performance wherever it can. It even adds a dynamic day and night cycle, wavy plants, and customized Nether and End dimensions with their own biome support.

2 Pastel Shaders

Minecraft: Best Low-End Shaders (10)

Pastel Shaders offers a softer view of Minecraft; you could say that this is the literal, tangible interpretation of looking through rose-colored glasses, since this shader makes the sky and your surroundings slightly pinker through hue and lighting adjustments.

Although, if you prefer alternate hues, this shader allows for multiple color presets and customizable color palettes to find the perfect look. The author boasts that this shader is optimized for low-end GPUs, and even systems running integrated graphics. If you're artistically inclined, this might be the high-performance shader for you.

1 Potato Shader

Minecraft: Best Low-End Shaders (11)

Given that the name has the word potato in it, it makes sense why this shader has become ultra popular with people running older hardware; even a potato could run it. Although, there are some drawbacks, such as a lack of dynamic shadows, and quite a bit of fog upon initial instillation.

Nonetheless, Potato Shader has many customizable settings, and is a great way to improve the look of your game with little to no hits to your overall performance. If you're on incredibly limiting hardware, you can't go wrong with this remarkably optimized shader.

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Minecraft: Best Low-End Shaders (2024)

FAQs

Are iris shaders good for low end? ›

I myself have a low end laptop and it can't run any shaders exceptionally well. If you do want one though, get fabric, then iris shaders. It's meant to optimize play with shaders. Then download "Sora's Shaders." Mine runs it at around 20-30 fps if that's good enough for you.

Which shader gives most FPS? ›

Once you do that, it is time to dive in and check out some of the best FPS-friendly Minecraft shaders!
  1. Cyanide Shaders. Cyanide is one of the simplest shader packs for Minecraft users with low-end PCs. ...
  2. YoFPS Shader (Chocapic13 Edit) ...
  3. Sildur's Basic Shaders. ...
  4. Tea Shaders. ...
  5. DrDestens MCShaders. ...
  6. Builder's QOL. ...
  7. MakeUp – Ultra Fast.
Apr 16, 2024

How much RAM do you need for Minecraft Shaders? ›

To run shaders properly, your PC must first meet certain hardware criteria. These include having at least one graphics card capable of supporting OpenGL 2+ (this will vary based on the pack), and at least 4GB of RAM memory allocated specifically for video processing (8GB+ recommended).

What is the most downloaded shader in Minecraft? ›

BSL Shaders are among the most popular shaders in the world, and it's easy to see why. Everything included here, from the amazing depth of field effects to the warm, crisp lighting, the beautiful water reflections, and the fluffy far-off clouds, is utterly sublime.

Do you need OptiFine for shaders? ›

After downloading your preferred shader pack, you must install the Optifine mod. You'll then be able to use your newly downloaded shader pack in Minecraft. If you do not have a shader pack already installed, you can find and download one from this website.

Which shader is the least laggy? ›

7) Chocapic13's Shaders

This pack optimizes how the game runs while still adding numerous texture upgrades and lighting improvements. Because of the way it is optimized, players do not have to worry about their PC lagging or causing any issues in game.

Do you need a good CPU for Minecraft shaders? ›

Is Minecraft more CPU or GPU-intensive? Base Minecraft tends to be more CPU-intensive, especially when generating new chunks or handling many entities. However, once you start introducing shaders, high-resolution texture packs, and certain mods, the game can become significantly more GPU-intensive.

What GPU is good for Minecraft shaders? ›

To average 60 fps or more, you'll want at least an RTX 3080 Ti. Also note how close the RTX 3080 10GB and RTX 3080 12GB are in performance, which indicates Minecraft RTX hits the RT Cores and GPU shaders far more than it depends on memory bandwidth.

Is 10GB of RAM good for Minecraft? ›

5-10GB – These plans are able to support over 40 mods or plugins. Above 6gb of ram includes all one-click install modpacks we offer. These are suggested if you are planning to start a big community. The bigger it is, the more RAM you should get.

Do shaders decrease FPS? ›

One such graphical modification is called shaders, which can greatly enhance the light and shadow engines of the game, making it look like a modern title. However, shaders can sometimes be quite intense on a device, especially those that are lower-end. They can cause massive ping spikes and FPS drops.

What is the easiest Minecraft shader to run? ›

Best Minecraft shaders for low-end PCs
  • Sildur's Shaders (Image via Mojang)
  • Wisdom Shaders (Image via Cheng Cao)
  • Magnificent Atmospheric Shaders (Image via Shader Mods)
  • Mr. ...
  • DMS Shaders (Image via DatWeirdPerson)
  • Potato Shader can run on Minecraft with just about any kind of hardware (Image via RRe36/CurseForge)

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