OpenGL FBO renderbuffer or texture attatchment

In what cases would I want to have a renderbuffer attachment in an OpenGL FBO, instead of a texture attachment, besides for the default framebuffer? As, a texture attach开发者_C百科ment seems far more versatile.

Textures provide more features to you (sampling!, formats variety) and hence are more likely subject to performance loss.

The answer is simple: use Textures wherever you have to sample from the surface (no alternatives).

Use Render buffers wherever you don't need to sample. The driver may or may not decide to store your pixel data more effectively based on your expressed intention of not doing sampling. You can use GL blitting afterwards to do something with the result.

Extending the question to OpenGL|ES, another reason to use RenderBuffers instead of textures is also that textures may not be supported in some configurations and prevent you from building a valid FBO. I specifically think about depth textures, which are not natively supported on some hardware, for instance nVidia Tegra 2/3.