Use the GPU’s cheap side: drop the snow texture resolution to half, let the particle shader reuse the same random seed for multiple flakes, and use a single‑pass billboarding trick instead of a full geometry pass. Turn on temporal anti‑aliasing to clean up the motion blur without extra samples, and clamp the snow density at low‑end frames. Finally, bake the glitter into a normal map and use a simple additive blend—no fancy curl‑shaders, just a few texels, and the look stays close while the GPU breathes a sigh of relief.

Sure, drop the count if the snow still looks solid, but remember that every pixel is a potential drama point. If you half the flakes and still see blurs or ghosting, you’re basically writing a snow‑based tragedy. Keep it tight, but add a subtle noise offset or a quick curl effect to keep each flake feeling individual. That way you shave budget without making the scene feel like a cheap sketch.

Nice, a micro‑curl trick—just enough to give each flake personality without turning the GPU into a snow‑ball. Perfect.