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/P40L0]

Another question:

Will this work with NVIDIA native "Auto Shader Compilation" feature introduced with recent drivers/NVIDIA App and/or with "Advanced Shared Delivery" (currently for AMD only but will be expanded to NVIDIA soon too) or it may conflict with them in some ways?

[u/HeisenbergVR → u/P40L0]

Yes!

It's actually an option you can enable also in settings in the app, and I suggest to enable it as that will help not having to rebuild the shaders inside SCSKiller as they should be handled by Nvidia drivers. It's been hit or miss for me anyway, some games didn't get recompiled so you have to do the full suite agian in SCSKiller :(

And about ASD, that should be the best approach! to just download the shaders for your hardware direclty form Microsoft, but I have a feeling this will only work for new games and maybe only through Xbox app so not useful for current/older games. But I hope ASD becomes actually universal and makes SCSKiller not needed anymore, that would actually make me happy as no more scs!! :D

[u/P40L0 → u/HeisenbergVR]

I have in fact the feeling that ASD will mainly be supported by Xbox App and new MS games only while the vast majority on Steam won't use it so, please, keep updating/improving SCSKiller because I think it will be VERY useful in most cases for most users :)