Always updating shader cache!

[BlazeXI]

Im on latest steam deck version and every day sometimes even twice a day all my games download shadercache again. Its super annoying

[Have Some Die]

Publicado originalmente por deaddoof:

Publicado originalmente por Have Some Die:

You wanna talk about “bad design” let’s talk about modern Windows. I currently have 3

Meh, I wouldn't fault Microsoft too much. They understood they had to leash Nvidia from making their own incompatible ecosystem and avoid destroying any PC gaming.

Nvidia does not want to compete on hardware only. Consumers have larger interest in Nvidia software add on to be served by a third party. Yet, Nvidia will always make themselves look on top.

My rant was obviously unrelated to shader caches. I’m just so sick of Windows in general and when people start acting like the Deck is inferior to Windows devices because of dumb stuff like this or because the compatibility is still not 100% it get me going sometimes, lol. For all I know these shader cache updates are just as frequent and annoying on Windows, but it’s been a long time since I’ve had so many games installed on Windows or launched Steam daily / near daily, but I do turn on my Deck almost every day so I see the updates and how frequent they are. I do get why it’s a minor annoyance, but it hasn’t annoyed me enough to turn off automatic updates.

If the updates are just as frequent on Windows as they are on SteamOS, then not only is this not a bug, but it’s not even a Steam Deck related issue. Go complain about it in the Steam client forum then! I’m so done feeding this troll.

[deaddoof]

Publicado originalmente por Have Some Die:

For all I know these shader cache updates are just as frequent and annoying on Windows, but it’s been a long time since I’ve had so many games installed on Windows or launched Steam daily / near daily, but I do turn on my Deck almost every day so I see the updates and how frequent they are. I do get why it’s a minor annoyance, but it hasn’t annoyed me enough to turn off automatic updates.

Hmmm. I do not think they have shader cache updates and just accepted shader hitches to be a fact of life.

The shader stuff will never be fix through with engineering as long as Nvidia dominates graphic standards. Nvidia will pull EEE whenever they can. They make Microsoft look like a puppy with their tactics. All these random compilers just because Nvidia wants to tacks on value for the end consumer. Game optimization..... Yea... Great idea.....
I wonder how many game devs have to balk until SPIR V was created. If it was up to GPU IHV, they would not even allow SPIR V IR to exist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

Edit: OP. It may not look like it. We are the third option for shader cache. All Linux needs is market share to beat down crappy business practices. Shader cache is the result of the industry who is more interested in screwing with each other than providing value for the consumer. GPL does wonders for software. GPL and other FOSS licenses helps beat down these practices.

https://www.gfxstrand.net/faith/blog/2022/01/in-defense-of-nir/

[Have Some Die]

Publicado originalmente por deaddoof:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

So it seems like Microsoft does deserve at least some of the blame. But certainly not Valve. If they had it their way, these updates wouldn’t be necessary, which is why you told him to take it up with Nvidia. That makes sense. I don’t expect Linux will have the market share necessary to put any real pressure on Nvidia anytime soon or possibly ever, unfortunately. But we can dream. If enough ignorant stuck-in-their-ways PC gamers pulled their heads out of their asses regarding Linux gaming, it could happen some day. Valve has finally proven it’s possible all these years after the failure of the Steam Machines. When there’s a will, there’s a way, and Valve willed it into existence.

[deaddoof]

Publicado originalmente por Have Some Die:

Publicado originalmente por deaddoof:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

So it seems like Microsoft does deserve at least some of the blame. But certainly not Valve. If they had it their way, these updates wouldn’t be necessary, which is why you told him to take it up with Nvidia. That makes sense. I don’t expect Linux will have the market share necessary to put any real pressure on Nvidia anytime soon or possibly ever, unfortunately. But we can dream. If enough ignorant stuck-in-their-ways PC gamers pulled their heads out of their asses regarding Linux gaming, it could happen some day. Valve has finally proven it’s possible all these years after the failure of the Steam Machines. When there’s a will, there’s a way, and Valve willed it into existence.

We have been saying these problems for decades and now they go and Linux and blame us. These problem glow like nighttime because you notice them when you do something different. These consumers, like the OP, are pretty rich in irony. Software turns to crap without freedom.

So it seems like Microsoft does deserve at least some of the blame

Meh, I have to give them merit for realizing GPU drivers stink and game os market is an enterprise market in disguise. It turns out consumers do not want fast innovation in the GPU space. They want narrow innovation. MS provided that platform. Games would had been more fragmented without MS intervention. Apple still doesn't give a damn.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20031224-00/?p=41363

And it’s not just corporate customers. This affects consumers too.

For Windows 95, my application compatibility work focused on games. Games are the most important factor behind consumer technology. The video card that comes with a typical computer has gotten better over time because games demand it. (Outlook certainly doesn’t care that your card can do 20 bajillion triangles a second.) And if your game doesn’t run on the newest version of Windows, you aren’t going to upgrade.

Anyway, game vendors are very much like those major corporations. I made phone call after phone call to the game vendors trying to help them get their game to run under Windows 95. To a one, they didn’t care. A game has a shelf life of a few months, and then it’s gone. Why would they bother to issue a patch for their program to run under Windows 95? They already got their money. They’re not going to make any more off that game; its three months are over. The vendors would slipstream patches and lose track of how many versions of their program were out there and how many of them had a particular problem. Sometimes they wouldn’t even have the source code any more.

They simply didn’t care that their program didn’t run on Windows 95. (My favorite was the one that tried to walk me through creating a DOS boot disk.)

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040305-00/?p=40373

Some unscrupulous drivers will detect that they are being run by WHQL and disable various features so they pass certification. Of course, they also run dog slow in the WHQL lab, but that’s okay, because WHQL is interested in whether the driver contains any bugs, not whether the driver has the fastest triangle fill rate in the industry. The most common cheat I’ve seen is drivers which check for a secret “Enable Dubious Optimizations” switch in the registry or some other place external to the driver itself. They take the driver and put it in an installer which does not turn the switch on and submit it to WHQL. When WHQL runs the driver through all its tests, the driver is running in “safe but slow” mode and passes certification with flying colors.

The vendor then takes that driver (now with the WHQL stamp of approval) and puts it inside an installer that enables the secret “Enable Dubious Optimizations” switch. Now the driver sees the switch enabled and performs all sorts of dubious optimizations, none of which were tested by WHQL.

[Mahjik]

Publicado originalmente por Izzythecat:

You know what else “stinks” waiting 30 minutes to play a game on a hand held device because of a stupid “shader cache” that eats up battery like a fat man at a bbq.

I had 47 shader updates come through on Sunday. The whole process took 2 minutes.

[Mahjik]

Publicado originalmente por DawdlingDan:

I have slow internet with a data usage cap of 150GB per month so I get where your coming from. However, Steam allows you to disable the downloading of these updates automatically every day so it's not a problem.

Go to settings -> downloads and set it to only download between 4am - 5am for example. That way it'll never download these updates. They'll still be queued in your downloads so you can manually pick just one to download or what ave ya.

You can go into Desktop Mode, go into Steam, then Setting and then Downloads. You can there Disable the Preload Cache.

[BlazeXI]

Bro I already have 20gb of fcking shaders on the internal drive and it’s almost full! I don’t even have a single game on it (64gb version) because the fcking shaders take the whole space over time ♥♥♥♥ these shaders why not single time download

[BlazeXI]

And I have only 4 games installed

[BlazeXI]

Can I change the directory of the shaders to my sd card where the games are located too?

[Mahjik]

Publicado originalmente por BlazeXI:

Can I change the directory of the shaders to my sd card where the games are located too?

Storage Manager
* Sync shadercache and compatdata to the same location the game is installed
* Delete shadercache and compatdata for whichever games you select
* Delete the shadercache and compatdata for all uninstalled games with a single click

https://github.com/CryoByte33/steam-deck-utilities

[Have Some Die]

Publicado originalmente por BlazeXI:

Can I change the directory of the shaders to my sd card where the games are located too?

If you don’t wanna install CryoUtilities you can do it via DeckyLoader or use these commands in Konsole:
https://github.com/scawp/Steam-Deck.Shader-Cache-Killer#run-online-via-curl
zShaderCacheMover will open a list of all your games and allow you to select individual shader cache or compatibility data directories to move and symlink to an SD card. zShaderCacheKiller will provide a similar interface that can be used to delete such files, for instance files for a game you’ve uninstalled.

[BlazeXI]

steam should change shader directorh where the game is installed tbh

[BlazeXI]

warframe 2gb shader update every 6 hours man

[deaddoof]

Publicado originalmente por Izzythecat:

You know what else “stinks” waiting 30 minutes to play a game on a hand held device because of a stupid “shader cache” that eats up battery like a fat man at a bbq.

At this point the switch is king it’s reliable battery charges right I can play Skyrim on the go and I don’t have to wait I turn on and play and enjoy. The day valve figures out how to do that simple thing is the day I will praise this device. Until then it was a purchase regret.

“There is no debate”

Yes there is.

Disable shader cache downloads for skyrim. The enable GPL pipeline.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/11rcnl4/psa_with_the_most_recent_update_steam_deck_now/

Btw, you can enable the variable global and disable shader cache in the whole system

[Mahjik]

Publicado originalmente por BlazeXI:

steam should change shader directorh where the game is installed tbh

Don't wait for Valve. Do it yourself. Valve is going to do what they think is right for the 80% of their user base. You may be in the 20% side. You have the ability to change it now. In the time you took to type the message, you could have done it.