What does -sm4 do?

[Jice]

What does -sm4 actually do? It give me a huge fps boost but I have no clue what it does

[neonx]

Drops the shaders and also drops down to dx10 rather than dx11

[EzRyder]

-sm4 reduces the shader model to an older 'legacy' version, its used to increase performance in older pc's

-d3d10 reduces the DirectX version from dx11 to dx10 for the same reason

both should only be used as a last resort AFTER setting default settings to lowest and you still need a fps boost. as they trash the video quality to some extent

here is an example
https://www.gameskinny.com/hi4me/how-to-increase-your-fps-in-ark-survival-evolved

note: -USEALLAVAILABLECORES is NOT needed anymore because they added this in an update

[Jice]

Thank you, -sm4 is the only launch option im using the d3d thing kept giving me a crash error. But man with the -sm4 thing it looks a lot more realisic too and way less bright thank goodness