How does hotlinking affect CPU if at all

[hofmax]

This is a hypothetical questions. There are many sites such as smiley and flash games sites that allow remote sites to hotlink in order to get extra traffic. How would such a strategy affect the CPU? Or would it just affect bandwidth?

[felgall]

Hotlinking static files would only affect bandwidth.

[hofmax]

Alright, and I think if I have a simple PHP file serve the pictures, images, video files etc. then that would affect CPU proportional to the usage of that file and the extent to which it consumes CPU?

[felgall]

If the PHP is the minimum required to serve the file from a different location then it should not have any significant CPU usage.

[hofmax]

All it would do is print the media file and include a text link back to my site.