It was efficient for the disk, but terrible for the GPU. You were forcing your graphics card to carry a swiss army knife when it only needed a corkscrew.
Beyond the Recompile: Deconstructing the "Iteration 3.0.0 Shader Download" iteration 3.0.0 shader download
Iteration 3.0.0 is the maturity of real-time rendering. It is heavy. It is large. But for the first time, it is finished. It was efficient for the disk, but terrible for the GPU
Have you seen a massive "Iteration 3.0.0" download in a recent game? Let us know which title pushed this update in the comments below. It was efficient for the disk