Steam Deck shader precaching utterly broken

[sick_sinus]

This is getting out of hand now.

The steam deck has always been downloading shader precaches way too often. Googling this topic will lead lots if threads complaining about the persistent issue with the deck downloading gigabytes of shaders.

Lately (I think as far back as the latest „stable“ OS version) my deck is downloading gigabytes of shaders every startup! It keeps downloading the same amount if data for every single game every time I start the damn thing up. This is ridiculous! And as I said, numerous threads both on reddit and here clearly state that this is far from being an isolated problem or bug on my deck alone.

I‘m sick and tired of playing the beta tester for valve, with them never getting a grip on the shader updating situation, despite having claimed so numerous times.

People keep saying those updates are meant to make the games run smoothly… Then why do non-steam games, that never get any shader updates through steam, run without the slightest stutter under proton? And what is it with decade old games like Skyrim? Shouldn‘t the shaders be completely compiled by now? What‘s to update there?

TLDR: Steam‘s shader precaching system is still broken and significantly impacts the overall gaming experience on the steam deck.

[TheKrapfcat]

You can disable Shader pre-caching by going into desktop mode and there in steam settings, Downloads and at the bottom you can disable it, now the Shader will be compiled while running and depending on the game could have some stutter

non-steam games compile those Shader at runtime as well

another solution is to simply have less games installed and if you really want to you can also pause the download and play whatever game you want

[TheKrapfcat]

Originally posted by element109:

I wish they would allow you to enable it on a per game basis.

I made a post on Feature request (Nobody cared, 0 responses ) , something to Enable, Delete or Move to SD card in Gamemode for each game separately and while they do that make something similar for Deleting or Moving the Prefix folder

[DisasterIncarnate]

rather than enable/disable it needs a limit, default = Always Update, Off, Only Update If No Cache Found or set to Update X times a day, minum being 1 day. Something like that. You should ideally be able to set this for all or individual games, as titles like Warframe will recompile shader cache every launch even if you just downloaded a cache.

[sick_sinus]

Originally posted by DisasterIncarnate:

rather than enable/disable it needs a limit, default = Always Update, Off, Only Update If No Cache Found or set to Update X times a day, minum being 1 day. Something like that. You should ideally be able to set this for all or individual games, as titles like Warframe will recompile shader cache every launch even if you just downloaded a cache.

Yeah, that one‘s really atrocious. 1,9 GB on EVERY startup! Problem is, all my games seem to need to recompile on every startup by now. But yeah, Warframe definitely takes the biggest chunk. The others range from 50 to 250 MB for shaders alone.

[Shimaaji]

Originally posted by TheKrapfcat:

You can disable Shader pre-caching by going into desktop mode and there in steam settings, Downloads and at the bottom you can disable it, now the Shader will be compiled while running and depending on the game could have some stutter
(...)

I understand that, in principle, it's a great feature ... but why does it have to re-download this stuff every single time the Deck gets rebooted or even just switched from offline to online mode after having been offline for a day?

[D. Flame]

I completely disabled it.

Honestly, it should have been setup to predownload them and save them after one download. Then it should have retained them for like the last 5 games you have played or something. Then those 5 should only redownload if the game gets a major update that warrants it.

[martin9700]

I seem to be downloading a ton of pre-caching files for games I don't even have installed!

[Mahjik]

Originally posted by martin9700:

I seem to be downloading a ton of pre-caching files for games I don't even have installed!

That I've never seen. I would recheck that as I bet you have the games installed for the shader downloads. Also, there are other updates like for Proton and Steam Redistributables.

[MISO4EVER]

Originally posted by Ozwald:

Originally posted by martin9700:

I seem to be downloading a ton of pre-caching files for games I don't even have installed!

Not sure how, but regardless, it's a useless 'feature' that should just be disabled by default. I got fed up with No Man's Sky downloading 8 gigs every day to every other day. I live in the sticks with a slow internet connection, so it was making games unplayable & I couldn't even watch streaming TV.

I mostly play on my switch and my deck is basically a paper weight same deal I don’t have time to wait 45 years to play some games for 20 mins by the time it loads all the shader cache I could have done a full around in vampire Survivors on my switch or mobile

[stuarty128]

I just remove the shader update from the queue and launch the game, works everytime