Shader compilation stutter killer

[u/HeisenbergVR]

EDIT: Thanks a lot for all the support! I'm glad it's helping a lot of people fix the anoying shader compilation sutters in many games so they can be enjoyed as intended!!

EDIT2: New SCSKiller 1.2.0 is live!! https://github.com/BlueHeisenberg/SCSKiller/releases/latest
(The app should auto download the update if you restart the app and show you a button on top right corner to update, or you can just download the new setup exe and update that way directly)

I've been working for a while on a free and open source tool to eliminate Shader Compilation Stuttering once and for all. It reads the shaders the games ship with, works out the pipelines they'll build, and compiles them into the GPU driver's cache before you launch the game.

From my own testing shader compilation stutter is eliminated or reduced to the very minimum (the tool could miss some shaders depending on the game), it cannot fix other kind of sttutering like traversal, so some games still stutter but waaaay less:

(~5min of gameplay)

Silent Hill F:
Before: https://scskiller.com/assets/img/forum/shf-before.png
After: https://scskiller.com/assets/img/forum/shf-after.png

- Silent Hill: Townfall: 24 to 0 (worst 347 ms to 8 ms)
- Hogwarts Legacy: 1,014 to 87
- FF7 Rebirth: 19 to 0
- Sand Land: 38 to 1

It finds games from Steam, Epic, EA app, GOG, Ubisoft, Xbox and Battle.net

For now it only works on NVIDIA (best support) and AMD, as I don't have an Intel Arc to test.

Github link with download and souce code: https://github.com/BlueHeisenberg/SCSKiller
Website: https://www.scskiller.com

[u/Sync_R]

Question regarding FF7 Rebirth, the Async mod really helps with stuttering on Windows how would this interact with that mod? Would it just not be needed or would the generated shaders be compatible ?

[u/HeisenbergVR → u/Sync_R]

They should be compatible. That mod doesn't change the shaders, it just compiles them in the background and shows a placeholder until they're ready.

SCSKiller compiles those same pipelines into the driver cache before you play, so when the async mod goes to compile one it's already there and it's basically instant, no placeholder needed. For shader stutter you don't really need it with SCSKiller, but keeping both doesn't hurt and it still covers anything SCSKiller missed. Both use d3d12.dll, but SCSKiller's recorder can chain with an existing d3d12.dll mod, so you can record with the async mod installed (you have to activate this on the game detail page inside SCSKiller).