Galaki said:
I am sure most (if not all) reviewers turned the 3D 'off' by the slider rather than system settings. |
I understand that the 3D slider is actually a software-mediated input. That is, you set the 3D slider to zero, but it's up to the game deciding what to do out of that rendering-wise. The game can
a) reduce the distance between the "virtual cameras" to almost zero, rasterizing two very similar images for antialiasing. I suppose that's what RE does, unless it's more akin to case (b). In this case, setting the slider to zero won't save you GPU "cycles", nor battery power.
b) change the rendering pipeline to achieve different video effects, or a better framerate. There was for example a rumour that DoA would work at 30fps with 3D enabled, at 60fps with 3D disabled. In this case the 2D rendering mode can be as much GPU intensive as the 3D one, or even more.
c) really care for your battery power, switch to a less intensive mode where the GPUs just render one image and use it for both eyes, with a reduced consumption for the GPU part.
Still, the energy consumption by the GPUs pales when compared to the screen backlight one. That's what is really going to kill the battery, and the fact that the parallax barriers will intercept half the light doesn't change with the 3D (software) settings.
Which is why there are reports that the battery life isn't really dependant -or depends really very little- on the 3D settings. Now, the screen backlight settings, that's what is really going to make a difference.
