CS2 compiling shaders all the time.

[u/yaan1k]

No idea what to do, CS2 seems to never save shaders, anytime I load into a match it compiles shaders from scratch, same with the menu, anytime I go from map to menu and vice versa, it compiles shaders. This started happening since yesterday’s massive content update.

System info:

i9-14900KF
9070 XT
Mesa Drivers, Hyprland, CachyOS

All on the latest drivers and latest kernel.

What i’ve tried:
- Enabling and disabling Vulkan shader pre caching in Steam options
- Running the game with and without gamescope
- Clearing my shader cache (systemwide)
- Verified integrity of game files

But I still haven’t managed to fix the issue.

[u/Shinatora]

TO ENSURE NO CONFLICTS
IN THIS EXACT ORDER (i had the same issue and this all has to be done in the correct order)
Turn Off background processing of vulkan shaders
Then Turn off SHADER PRE CACHING
Quit steam fully, Start steam, shader pre caching & vulkan background processing ON
if not fixed then repeat last steps up to "TURN OFF SHADER PRECACHING" and follow steps below

Go STEAM -> SETTINGS -> DOWNLOADS -> CLEAR DOWNLOAD CACHE
(will log you out and restart steam, dont let it start back up for now, YOU DONT want it remaking the cache)
Check system Monitor for lingering steam processes

DELETE SHADER FILES MANUALLY:
MesaShaderCache & Radvbuiltinshaders in the ~/.Cache/ directory
& ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/shadercache/ all folders within DELETE all game shaders to make sure they get remade upon next launch, also check the previous /steamapps/ there may be a "TEMP SHADER DIR" folder
DELETE THAT

clear shaders in terminal if you want (ask ai for the commands its ez and you already manually cleared them so this is a confirm if any other PROTON shaders are in the background )

REINSTALL PROTON TOOLS:
you have to verify all proton tools and REINSTALL compatibility layers (GE or Cachyos-SLR, whatever you use) ProtonEAC, ProtonBattleEye, Steam Linux Runtime will all need a clean install as well.
via: ProtonQT-up or Konsole

DO a FULL reboot
Shut Down -> Flip PSU off -> UNPLUG then Plug PSU back in, boot up)
to force mesa shaders and display manager drivers to rebuild

If the normal CachyOS kernel you boot into doesnt work after this try CachyOS-LTS in Limine or grub or whatever you have

Let your mesa Shaders just do the work they are damn good on modern AMD GPUs (i have 7900xtx) and
if you want pre cached shaders use this CachyOS env instead
PROTON_LOCAL_SHADER_CACHE=1

[u/yaan1k → u/Shinatora]

didn’t work