No because either way you do it, you store a model on the GFX card and say "draw this model with these textures", with an LOD model your still saying "draw this model with these textures". Both doing the same cpu to gpu talk. Drawing nothing is always faster than drawing something. A diagram: A = lag time from cpu to gpu…
With my limited knowledge I do think it matters most of the time especially if you're vertex bound. However if you are already bound by batch count then having LoDs is not going to help much at all. Lets say you have 400 draw calls and each call equals an individual 3d object. Let's also say that this equals 1000 000 tris…
You are absolutely right that we have to account for minimum spec PC. And if you look at the diagrams this things were tested on as low specs as 1ghz CPU with GeForce 2 to GeForce FX5800 and Radeon equivalent. And they show a free 10-200 tri gap even there. Are your games even tested for comparability with such hardware…
Not really no. Because they perform culling which determines what can be seen, so you have to balance batching and individually drawing each object. Like I said for a whole house it doesnt make sense, you will never see all of it. You are only batching static objects as well. So in an FPS online, you never usually see all…