Graphics/ hardware question

[blackbeard]

Hello all, Ive been in the game for a while and have a question, in graphics settings what is the difference between running, hardare, direct, software, hardware/copy etc......... im trying to optimize my playing experience, any help is well accepted, thanks

[jlv]

Software - Terrain textures are rendered on the CPU and uploaded to the GPU.
Copy - Terrain textures are rendered with the GPU in the framebuffer and copied to texture memory.
Direct - Terrain textures are rendered with the GPU directly into texture memory.
Hardware - Uses the fixed (i.e non-programmable) OpenGL rendering pipeline.
Shaders - Uses GLSL shader programs for per pixel lighting.