Why OptiFine is no longer a top performance mod for Minecraft?

While Minecraft has some of the most basic graphics and textures in gaming space, it can still take a toll on a device, especially because of its nearly endless map. Even without any demanding texture packs and shaders, the game can lag a lot. This is why the community came together to make all kinds of performance mods to make chunk rendering, lighting, and dropped items more optimized.

OptiFine is one of the most famous performance mods for the sandbox. However, it is no longer the best in the business.

Note: This article is subjective and solely reflect's writer's opinion.

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Reasons why OptiFine is no longer the best performance mod for Minecraft

Delayed updates

OptiFine is still stuck in 1.20.6 development (Image via OptiFine)

Mojang Studios is among the very few gaming companies that constantly work on their age-old games and keep adding loads of new features to them every year. Since Minecraft keeps getting new updates, the modding community also moves ahead with the game and updates their mods to be compatible with the latest game versions.

Over the years, OptiFine has slowed its update cycle. While the latest game version 1.21 is already out for a month, OptiFine developers are still working on a stable version of 1.20.6, which came out nearly three months ago. The mod's latest version is still a preview for the 1.20.6.

In contrast, other performance mods like Sodium, Lithium, Rubidium, and more are already compatible with the Minecraft 1.21 version and are readily available with better performance boosts than OptiFine.

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Smoother experience offered by other performance mods

The debate of which performance mod offers the smoothest experience has been ongoing in the community for several years now. However, it is safe to say that OptiFine's features are not as good as those of Sodium and other performance mods out there.

Mods like Sodium and Lithium can offer better FPS stability, lighting quality, and faster chunk rendering.

On the other hand, while OptiFine does have some special features like fog-removal, and zoom options, these can also be added to the game with other specialized mods.

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OptiFine still necessary for a lot of mods and modpacks

All of that said, despite not being on the latest version and being slightly slower than other mobs, OptiFine still holds its place in the modding community.

For starters, it has been such a famous performance mod for Minecraft, that several other mods and modpacks still require OptiFine to run properly. Due to its connection and compatibility with the vast catalog of mods, OptiFine is still in many people's devices.