The difference between non-shaders and shaders used to be way bigger. Earlier, non-shaders had huge black outlines and edgy joints, and you had to use shaders to get it smoothed out.
As per now I will only say the colors are smoother and more shaded in shaders. Without, they look a bit too shiny. This is only if you're playing in raw shaders. When you run shaders, you have several additional options. These are fluid blood (Blood is rendered as a fluid object), reflections (the floor is like a poor mirror, so the Toris get reflected), soft shadows (softer shadows on Toris. This is hardly noticable), ambient occlusion (I don't know what it is, and I can't spot the difference) and bump maps (This is for the bump map textures. It gives the texture an illusion of a rough surface with bumps).
I hope this helped you. You won't lose any gameplay experience if playing without shaders.