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Minecraft, the beloved sandbox game with its signature blocky graphics, has maintained its visual style for years, with only minor texture updates. While the game can run on a variety of budget-friendly systems, older systems may struggle to maintain playable framerates.
For these systems, performance-enhancing mods like Optifine and Sodium can improve framerates and gameplay smoothness.
Understanding Mods
For those new to gaming, mods are user-created programs or files that introduce changes to the game. Over the past decade, the Minecraft community has released over 100,000 mods, making Minecraft one of the most customizable PC games. To install mods, players must use one of two mod loaders: Forge and Fabric.
Optifine and Sodium are popular mods designed to enhance the game’s visuals and performance. Both mods are worth trying for players seeking to boost performance. Each mod comes with its unique features and requires different mod loaders.
Optifine requires a Forge installation of Minecraft, while Sodium requires Fabric. It’s important to note that neither mod alters the gameplay of Minecraft; they optimize how certain elements are rendered. Using shaders with these mods can introduce more visual changes, but this may not be optimal for FPS (frames per second).
For players who enjoy experimenting with different mods, Optifine is the better choice because Forge supports more mods than Fabric. However, if a player’s primary goal is to improve the game’s smoothness and FPS, the comparison below will help determine which mod best suits their needs.
If you have already picked a card, why not give it a try on these best mods for Minecraft in 2023?
Optifine vs Sodium FPS Comparison
While exploring the new cherry groves biome in Minecraft version 1.20 with Optifine version HD U I5 pre7 and Sodium version 0.4.10, Sodium performed slightly better than Optifine in terms of FPS. However, the difference was not noticeable.
When flying around in creative mode, Sodium provided significantly higher framerates than Optifine, making it the clear winner in this scenario. Although the difference in framerates may vary depending on the user’s system, Sodium is likely to provide higher framerates in most cases.
Shader FPS Comparison
Comparing the shader performance of the two mods may not seem fair to some, as Sodium does not support shaders by default and requires the Iris Shader mod. However, since this is the only way for a Sodium user to use shaders, the comparison is worth it for those players.
Optifine is surprisingly much more playable with shaders, providing smoother rendering and slightly better FPS, even when flying around. On the other hand, Sodium drops quite a few frames while trying to render new chunks, causing an unpleasant experience.
Final Thoughts
The choice between Optifine and Sodium depends on the player’s needs. If the player enjoys trying different mods, Optifine is a better choice. However, if the player is solely focused on improving their game’s smoothness and FPS, Sodium is the better option.
And if you’re looking to improve your latency as well, here’s a quick tip on how to improve Minecraft with VPN.
