Hey everyone! I’m relatively new to Linux gaming and came across a video discussing Steam’s shader pre-caching. The video suggests creating a ‘steam_dev.cfg’ file in the ‘/local/share/Steam’ directory to allocate more cores for shader loading to speed up the process. I’m curious about your opinions on this. Is it still something that’s useful, or should I steer clear of it?
4 Answers
I keep it off as well. I mainly use Proton-GE for better video playback, and I don’t really have any issues. Once Linux deals with those shader loading stutters, it usually feels more stable compared to Windows.
I actually turned off shader pre-caching in Steam settings about a year ago, and I’ve had no issues. With DXVK handling shader compilation on the fly, it works pretty efficiently. No need to precompile everything anymore!
I find it a bit annoying too since some games like Rocket League seem to download tons of shaders every day. It’s almost ridiculous, like 10GB at times for something that doesn’t even make a big difference.
I also have shader pre-caching disabled. I only notice a brief FPS drop (from 75 to around 40) when changing locations in some games since shaders load on demand. It doesn’t seem necessary for most modern setups. But I didn’t know you could use multiple CPU cores for that!
Yeah, I was surprised too! Makes me think it could help, but only if you’re seeing loading issues.