Reducing poly count - do vertices matter?

[MegatronsPet]

If I delete a face, but keep all three vertices and just snap some together (b/c the verts are still needed for the other faces) - has anything been gained, or is that just a waste of time? The "poly" count is clearly reduced, but is that at all helpful to the computer?

Thanks!

[fakepeeps7]

Well, your face count will go down, but unless you're going to do that a whole bunch of times, it probably won't make much difference in the long run.

[CatOfEvilGenius]

Reducing polys does matter. There is information stored for each poly, such as UV mapping, that is not stored at the vertices themselves, so when you remove polys, you do reduce the file size. Computers render polys, not verts, so it does speed up rendering time. As fp7 said, you need to remove a bunch of polys for it to matter much.

[MegatronsPet]

Thanks!
I'm a bit obsessive-compulsive, so can't really help not deleting every spare face - so knowing that it helps even a tiniest bit is good =D