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Realistic Minecraft shader packs

Every shader pack carries a performance tier its own author set, and a style. Pick what your card can handle and what you want it to look like. We are not judging which is prettiest; we are reporting what the authors said.

What can your PC handle?
Anything232Integrated graphics, an old laptop, a machine that struggles with vanilla. These are built to cost almost nothing.Modest207An entry-level or older dedicated card. Real lighting without giving up playable frame rates.Mid-range148A current mid-range card. Proper shadows, reflections and volumetric light.Powerful80A strong modern card. Everything on, and the frame rate is your problem.
What should it look like?
AnyLike vanilla, but better235Semi-realistic126Realistic222Fantasy265Cartoon68Path traced27

Aims at photographic. Expects a good card and usually a matching resource pack.

Frequently asked

Which Minecraft shader runs best on a weak PC?

232 of the shader packs we track are tagged by their own authors as running on very weak hardware, including integrated graphics. That tag is the author's own claim about their pack, not a benchmark we ran, which is why it is worth more than a top ten list somebody wrote once.

Do I need Iris or OptiFine?

One of the two, and Iris is the usual answer now: it is faster, it works alongside Sodium, and it loads packs written in the OptiFine format. OptiFine still has features nothing else replicates, so a pack built specifically for it may behave differently under Iris.

Will shaders lower my frame rate?

Yes, considerably. Shaders rewrite how the game draws light and shadow, which is expensive whatever your hardware. Running Sodium alongside Iris buys some of that cost back, which is why the two are usually installed together.

How is this list ordered?

By followers, not downloads. A shader bundled inside a popular modpack inherits that pack's download count, so downloads say more about the modpack than the shader. Nobody follows a shader pack by accident.

Installing them is a separate question: setting up Sodium and Iris covers what to install and in what order. Or browse every shader pack by Minecraft version.

Is this information wrong or missing something? .