10 - 15 FPS BOOST after changing shader cache to unlimited - TRY IT

[AssassinZX]

Nvidia Control Panel > Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings or Global Settings > find or add DD2 > Shader Cache Size > change to Unlimited

3000/4000 series GPUs have it in global settings, just go to Shader Cache size directly and change it, don't need to find DD2 program.

I'm able to run at a smooth 4k 60 fps in wilderness now, relatively constantly. Ryzen 5800H and RTX 3080 laptop GPU. DLSS quality.

The above apparently also fixes some crashes for some people (no guarantee)

UPDATE: some users reporting avg 20 fps increase!

2nd recommendation: Use FULLSCREEN mode and not windowed/borderless window - some users do report better performance - and this has also been proven to work for other games.

For AMD GPUs:

Originalmente postado por syphonhail:

Originalmente postado por Skysagi:

Is there something similar for AMD?

Make sure you are on AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 24.3.1 its updated for Dragon's Dogma 2. Make sure you are on Full Screen and have FSR3 Enabled.

[AssassinZX]

Originalmente postado por Ziack:

Mine was already set to unlimited. Still getting 20fps in the city with a 3060ti and a 10700F CPU. Cool game.

play around with the settings in the options menu in the game. graphic settings in particular. I had a instance (only once in about 30 hours of playing) wherein the game was locking at 30fps constant. Not sure why it did that, but I changed some settings like VRR/refresh rate etc etc, and then restarted and it worked properly. Then changed the settings back to how they always were, no issues after.

also set it to fullscreen, close all other programs

[AssassinZX]

Originalmente postado por Average pizza enjoyer:

As someone who doesn't have 1tb of free space on his NVME2 SSD with all the games already installed, the concept of applying 100gb or unlimited shader space for all these modern games that now rely on large caches TERRIFIES me lol. sounds like a good way to run out of space or cause hard drive writing errors. Which is why i'm currently only doing 10.

So are you were you able to get the stated 10-20 FPS boost by setting it to 10GB?

[emitfudd]

I just tried this and it made no difference. With the default driver setting, whatever that was, I am getting a low of 43FPS and a high of 60FPS. With the cache size set to 10GB I get a low of 45, high of 60. Surprisingly with it set to 100GB I get low 43, high 58.

This is all in the city standing in the exact same place. I am panning the camera around in a circle and watching the lows/highs.

3080 with a 5900x.

[Insomec]

My FPS fluctuate by 10-15fps each second constantly to 60s then to 90s then to 70s its hard to know whether these actaully work. The game cant hold a 'steady' fps to save its life

[JtDarth]

Originalmente postado por Insomec:

My FPS fluctuate by 10-15fps each second constantly to 60s then to 90s then to 70s its hard to know whether these actaully work. The game cant hold a 'steady' fps to save its life

That's when you set a framecap to make it steadier.

[FuscusNight]

Placebo, just like when people said setting api to dx11 in launch option or the ini would give you a boost, it doesn't do anything. Cannot force DD2 to run in DX11.

[JtDarth]

Originalmente postado por FuscusNight:

Placebo, just like when people said setting api to dx11 in launch option or the ini would give you a boost, it doesn't do anything. Cannot force DD2 to run in DX11.

Have you tried doing so from the config file? It does imply that it supports it, though I've personally not tried it.

[AssassinZX]

Originalmente postado por FuscusNight:

Placebo, just like when people said setting api to dx11 in launch option or the ini would give you a boost, it doesn't do anything. Cannot force DD2 to run in DX11.

Dozens of people here have successfully seen tangible FPS boost from doing it, it doesn't work for everyone for whatever the reason, definitely not a placebo. When I heard of it/tried it, even the FPS right on the start screen was increased from what I initially had. Difference is very obvious if it works.

[GrandTickler]

Originalmente postado por Average pizza enjoyer:

As someone who doesn't have 1tb of free space on his NVME2 SSD with all the games already installed, the concept of applying 100gb or unlimited shader space for all these modern games that now rely on large caches TERRIFIES me lol. sounds like a good way to run out of space or cause hard drive writing errors. Which is why i'm currently only doing 10.

does the cache even hit such large sizes? the game's own precompiled shadercache file (shader.cache2) only hits 224mb so i wonder what else would the nvidia shadercache handle

[SinsqnceTW]

Originalmente postado por GrandTickler:

Originalmente postado por Average pizza enjoyer:

As someone who doesn't have 1tb of free space on his NVME2 SSD with all the games already installed, the concept of applying 100gb or unlimited shader space for all these modern games that now rely on large caches TERRIFIES me lol. sounds like a good way to run out of space or cause hard drive writing errors. Which is why i'm currently only doing 10.

does the cache even hit such large sizes? the game's own precompiled shadercache file (shader.cache2) only hits 224mb so i wonder what else would the nvidia shadercache handle

Pretty sure DX12 uses a different shader precompling to that of DX11 in that it does it in realtime which is why most of the games using that API ends up having around the 200+mb file size, So not entirely sure if this does anything at all tbh but if people are somehow experiencing improvements then who knows¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Asgradow]

Imagine everyone was like AssassinZX:
- no stupid profile pictures of anime girls;
- his reviews are spot on;
- member of Sweet Baby Inc. Detected;
- helps fellow gamers having better gameplay...

Our civilization would be reaching neighboring galaxies...

[Stripey]

Originalmente postado por Asgradow:

Imagine everyone was like AssassinZX:
- no stupid profile pictures of anime girls;
- his reviews are spot on;
- member of Sweet Baby Inc. Detected;
- helps fellow gamers having better gameplay...

Our civilization would be reaching neighboring galaxies...

What is blud waffling about?

[DAOWAce]

Shader cache limit has never done a damn thing for me in any game.

Nor has adjusting process priority.

Or fullscreen/windowed if FSO is active (gsync working), notably in DX12 where FSE doesn't really exist.

Or NVCP 'max performance'.

Or any other random "fix" people in the community post about. UNLESS it is an actual modification of the software.

The only thing that impacts performance that isn't better hardware is setting the game to only run on physical cores, and/or 1 CCD (AMD) or P cores on Intel. The performance bump isn't that much on a 5950x (~5 fps). This applies to most games, as most games are negatively impacted by using SMT/HT cores, and on AMD, cross-CCD communication.

Other than that, overclocking CPU and RAM or GPU depending on bottleneck is your only option until the devs actually put out an optimization patch, which probably won't happen for a long time.

People posting all these 'fixes' and claiming they work, along with some other randoms claiming they work, have other issues going on. ie; the shader cache is completely full/on slow drive, pagefile poorly configured/on a slow drive, there's background crap going on, there's security things enabled chunking performance, background recording (gamebar/GFE), windows BS, there's issues with software compatibility, overlays, outdated drivers, etc..

TLDR: On a properly working system, there's nothing a user can do to improve things. Fixes are placebo or caused by something else.

Also as an aside, using DLSS FG isn't a fix, it's a workaround and has its own problems too. If you can tolerate it, cool, enjoy.

[The Resistance V]

Originalmente postado por AssassinZX:

Nvidia Control Panel > Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings or Global Settings > find or add DD2 > Shader Cache Size > change to Unlimited

3000/4000 series GPUs have it in global settings, just go to Shader Cache size directly and change it, don't need to find DD2 program.

I'm able to run at a smooth 4k 60 fps in wilderness now, relatively constantly. Ryzen 5800H and RTX 3080 laptop GPU. DLSS quality.

The above apparently also fixes some crashes for some people (no guarantee)

UPDATE: some users reporting avg 20 fps increase!

2nd recommendation: Use FULLSCREEN mode and not windowed/borderless window - some users do report better performance - and this has also been proven to work for other games.

For AMD GPUs:

Originalmente postado por syphonhail:

Make sure you are on AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 24.3.1 its updated for Dragon's Dogma 2. Make sure you are on Full Screen and have FSR3 Enabled.

be careful doing this shader cache is important bc if DD2 has a memory leak its gonna create a giant DUMP file and could blue screen/crash your computer use with caution (this happened with users who played Skyrim , Fallout and Bioshock)

[JtDarth]

Originalmente postado por The Resistance V:

Originalmente postado por AssassinZX:

Nvidia Control Panel > Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings or Global Settings > find or add DD2 > Shader Cache Size > change to Unlimited

3000/4000 series GPUs have it in global settings, just go to Shader Cache size directly and change it, don't need to find DD2 program.

I'm able to run at a smooth 4k 60 fps in wilderness now, relatively constantly. Ryzen 5800H and RTX 3080 laptop GPU. DLSS quality.

The above apparently also fixes some crashes for some people (no guarantee)

UPDATE: some users reporting avg 20 fps increase!

2nd recommendation: Use FULLSCREEN mode and not windowed/borderless window - some users do report better performance - and this has also been proven to work for other games.

For AMD GPUs:

be careful doing this shader cache is important bc if DD2 has a memory leak its gonna create a giant DUMP file and could blue screen/crash your computer use with caution (this happened with users who played Skyrim , Fallout and Bioshock)

A memory leak wouldn't effect shader cache, dude. Mem leak is result of improper memory management and cleanup in RAM. Shader cache is a different process, and DD2 in particular pre-compiles most of it. I shudder to think how bad performance in-game would be for the first five hours or so it the game was actually generating shaders on the fly. I don't see shader cache massively effecting dump files, either.

On a related note, on the question of 'does DX12 even use cache? I thought it dynamically generated on the fly and saved to it's own cache?', the answer is 'not by default'. It has to be specifically coded to do so. Part of the reason DX12 games seem to run so much worse relative to DX11, even when utilizing the same tech, and oft with the same levels of visual quality, is because DX11 actually had a lot of automated mem management and backend structures that have to be manually implemented by devs in DX12. Meaning devs (often those making the engines, not game devs) have to actually build and optimize structures that were just there, doing their thing by default in DX11.


The reason cache size helps some but not others, is because not everyone has the same number and volume of shaders already extant. If you are already close to max limits on shader cache, then anything the game tries to store, has to go through a 'what needs to be kept' process that slows things, as it decides what shaders to prune from cache and what ones to keep around.

Messing with cache size might also force some updates/regen of cached shaders, meaning those that might have genned with faults or issues may get a second try, fixing those faults and issues and resulting in somewhat improved performance.


On a final note, if you are having issues with performance, it won't hurt to delete the dragon's dogma 2 shader caches to try to force a regen. It might help.

Dragon's Dogma 2 in particular doesn't store it's shaders in with the nvidia cache, but instead in the game install directory. Mine are approximately 260mb, as an example. Why might increasing size help then? Dunno. But it helps for some. Possibly some interplay with an automated process within the driver/specific game implementation regarding shader caching that also effects the process for DX12 caching?

I know a fair number of programs that will actually see a noticeable performance increase, just from knowing it has a buffer, even when it isn't actively using it, for RAM/VRAM. I don't see why cache size would be different.

EDIT:
Some DX12 games store cache in %user/appdata/local/D3DScache