Stuttering and NVIDIA shader cache

[Yorrrrrr]

Stuttering and NVIDIA shader cache

Hi. Ever since I got Witcher 3, I´ve been having sporadic stutter and hitches, no matter what i do. I´ve tried a number of different settings, tweaks, nvidia control panel settings, optimizing the PC, different nvidia drivers. My PC is an Core i7 6700K @ 4.4 GHz, MSI Z170A Gaming M7 motherboard, G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4 3000 16GB memory, MSI GTX 980 Ti Gaming 6G, etc, Windows 10 x64 and the PC is pretty optimized for games. I have very high fps in this game, at the highest of settings, but it still sometimes stutter.

After investigating and trying pretty much about everything, I came into something interesting. When I delete the nvidia shader cache contents, next time I start up Witcher 3 the game will stutter, but the more I play, the nvidia shader cache folder will fill with files, and then the game will play much better, very smooth. If I turn off the shader cache off in nvidia control panel, the game will start stuttering again. The only way to have the game smooth is by letting shader cache fill over time, and in the next 2 to 3 restarts, the game will be smooth. As the nvidia shader cache is a temporary folder, if you let some program like CCleaner to delete it, the game will stutter and the cache would build all over again and the game will be eventually smooth again once the cache is filled. Notice that, if you play a lot of games at the same time, it will be filled with different files for the various games, and maybe Witcher 3 will stutter, as the shader cache temportary folder is limited by size (I think 256 MB or something..)

It seems then, that the game doesn´t handle this feature very well and some stutter issues are related to this, at least in my case.


Anyone experincing something like this? Thoughts?

 

[Verrenus]

I, too, have noticed the same thing, but I had no idea it was tied to the Shader Cache until I had to disable it in the NVIDIA Control Panel specifically for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, which hitches regularly with the cache turned "On".

In The Witcher 3's case, however, the Shader Cache really does work properly, meaning that once its built, the game stops stuttering (on my system, at least)!

 

[Yorrrrrr]

Weird, I never noticed stutters or hitches in MGSTPP, even with cache turned on, or in any other game FWIW. Unfortunately, Witcher 3 is the only game on my library that stutters. Until the shader cache is built, that is.

 

[Verrenus]

Weird, I never noticed stutters or hitches in MGSTPP, even with cache turned on, or in any other game FWIW. Unfortunately, Witcher 3 is the only game on my library that stutters. Until the shader cache is built, that is.

Depending on one's hardware (e.g. monitor refresh rate) and personal sensitivity, stutters and hitches can go unnoticed for some, while being downright immersion-breaking for others.

For instance, I am personally very troubled by stuttering and hitching and can detect them very easily, but I am not bothered at all by the in-motion texture shimmering caused by poor anti-aliasing methods!

 

[prince_of_nothing]

Hi. Ever since I got Witcher 3, I´ve been having sporadic stutter and hitches, no matter what i do. I´ve tried a number of different settings, tweaks, nvidia control panel settings, optimizing the PC, different nvidia drivers. My PC is an Core i7 6700K @ 4.4 GHz, MSI Z170A Gaming M7 motherboard, G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4 3000 16GB memory, MSI GTX 980 Ti Gaming 6G, etc, Windows 10 x64 and the PC is pretty optimized for games. I have very high fps in this game, at the highest of settings, but it still sometimes stutter.

After investigating and trying pretty much about everything, I came into something interesting. When I delete the nvidia shader cache contents, next time I start up Witcher 3 the game will stutter, but the more I play, the nvidia shader cache folder will fill with files, and then the game will play much better, very smooth. If I turn off the shader cache off in nvidia control panel, the game will start stuttering again. The only way to have the game smooth is by letting shader cache fill over time, and in the next 2 to 3 restarts, the game will be smooth. As the nvidia shader cache is a temporary folder, if you let some program like CCleaner to delete it, the game will stutter and the cache would build all over again and the game will be eventually smooth again once the cache is filled. Notice that, if you play a lot of games at the same time, it will be filled with different files for the various games, and maybe Witcher 3 will stutter, as the shader cache temportary folder is limited by size (I think 256 MB or something..)

It seems then, that the game doesn´t handle this feature very well and some stutter issues are related to this, at least in my case.


Anyone experincing something like this? Thoughts?

Yeah, this is caused by the engine's handling of shader compilation. Apparently it doesn't do it very well, hence the stuttering and hitching with shader cache turned off.. With SLI, it's even worse. The SLI compounds issue by approximately two fold.

The shader cache saves the compiled shaders, so that they don't have to be compiled by the CPU each time you play the game. This doesn't work for every game though, as Verrenus pointed out. With some games, enabling shader cache will cause more stutter because those shaders have to be pulled from storage. A good engine can utilize the CPU well enough to do real time shader compilation in the background, which is usually faster than pulling it pre-compiled from storage..

Suffice to say, Red Engine 3 isn't a tier one engine by a long shot. It's more tier 2, or even tier 3.. They really need to invest more into developing their engine if they want to be a full fledged AAA developer..