Minecraft Distant Horizons vs Nvidium: How different are the two render mods?

Minecraft render mods are an essential part of the add-on community, greatly improving render distance as well as in-game FPS. These mods optimize the native game engine and utilize hardware and software-based optimization to provide better framerates and experience. There are many such mods, with Distant Horizons and Nvidium being two of the most-used add-ons.

Here's everything you need to know about the differences between Distant Horizons and Nvidium in Minecraft.

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Minecraft Distant Horizons and Nvidium: How are the two different from each other?

Minecraft Distant Horizons

Distant Horizons is best if you wish to use shader engines like Iris and Optifine (Image via Mojang Studios)

Minecraft Distant Horizons is a render mod that adds simplified terrain beyond Minecraft's default render distance. This essentially improves the game's performance and allows for longer draw distances without bottling your device's resources. It adds a highly intricate Level of Detail (LOD) system to Minecraft, allowing for better visual depth.

Distant Horizon runs on Forge, Fabric, and NeoForge, allowing you wider freedom to choose your favorite mod loader. The render mod also supports shader engines like Optifine and Iris, allowing you to use shaders in conjunction with the mod. Distant Horizons.

It is also important to remember that Distant Horizons is a client-side mod, so you will need to physically explore chunks before they are stored on the server. The only downside to this is the rapidly increasing file size since more chunks will need to be stored locally. This becomes an issue for users playing the game on devices such as the Steam Deck, which has limited storage.

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Minecraft Nvidium

Nvidium will run only on Nvidia-based GPUs (Image via Mojang Studios)

Nvidium is a replacement rendering backend solution for the sodium mod which exclusively uses Nvidia-based OpenGL extensions. This results in a significant increase in the fps. Unlike Distant Horizons, Nvidium works exclusively on Nvidia GPUs that support mesh shaders — AMD-based GPUs will not work with this mod. It automatically disables on non-Nvidia systems.

The Nvidium mod uses mesh shaders that allow for extremely fast and performant terrain culling. This means your GPU works much more efficiently, allowing the game to run better via improved utilization of present resources. It is important to note that Nvidium is not built for shaders and does not support their use — the mod will disable itself if Iris Shaders are activated.

Additionally, Nvidium will require the sodium mod to run — it is not independent like the Distant Horizons and will need assets from the mod to function properly. Sodium only works on Fabric, NeoForge, and Quilt-based instances so your choices are limited to these.

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Which render mod is better for you?

The choice of render mod depends on what kind of visuals you want in-game — realistic or vanilla (Image via Mojang Studios)

If you wish to use larger render distances while using some of the best Minecraft shaders, it is recommended that you use Distant Horizons — Nvidium doesn't support shaders.

On the other hand, if you're a vanilla purist and only looking for better FPS and improved performance for your gameplay instead of transforming your world's visual, Nvidium is the way to go.

Both render mods offer a brilliant way to optimize your gameplay and get better performance using the available resources. But the choice depends on your use case and how you wish to transform the sandbox world.

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