Shaders vs Shadows?

What is the difference between both, and which one uses more resources (in a shooter for instance)? thx.

 

A "shader" is a programmable function that does some effect on an object, such as move a vertex in a pattern, or change a texture, or something. A shadow is a second rough rendering from the perspective of a light source that will make a realistic shadow fall in the game. It really depends on how the shaders and shadows are programmed, as well as what kind of graphics card you have in order to tell which one will take up more and which kind of resources

 

FEAR runs really well on low end cards without shadows, though playing FEAR with anything less than medium shadows really hurts the game terribly as they are used extensively and to great effect. In most modern games soft shadows usually take a huge performance hit, while not really giving much at all in return.

 

Pitabred explained it well...
Shadows are in fact done as the 3d projections of the model on a surface - pressing the GPU even harder to calculate.

I double Iceman's post + FEAR singleplayer is nothing without shadows. Multiplayer is better without shadows. But there were situations where shadows could help me a lot in multiplayer too.

Cheers,

Ivan

 

Shadows are made by shaders. (good-looking shadows, are, anyway)
Which means that when you enable shadows in your game, the shaders have to work overtime.