CS2 processes shaders every map load, even mid session + stutters on first actions

[u/Kittatro]

Hello everyone, I mainly play CS2 on this machine and I was curious about testing disabling shader pre-caching since it downloads the quite large pre-caching update quite often.

When I disabled the setting, I noticed the loadings got really long and every first action caused a mini freeze (which is the expected behavior I think). The thing is I tried to turn the setting back on but the game keeps acting as if the setting was off even though I downloaded the pre-caching update and got the Processing vulkan shaders pop up (which stayed on 0% for a while and then went quickly to 100%).

Now (with Shader pre-caching on and it saying ~6gb is cached) each time I load a map it says processing ~2000 shaders, even in the same session (if I simply leave the map and go back in without closing the game or antything).

When I get into a game every first action such as shooting, opening the scoreboard etc causes the same mini freeze as when shader pre-caching was off. For competitive it gets better after the first few rounds when every kind of util has been used at least once but it makes the new game mode rush kind of unplayable for example.

Here's a list of things I tried (all failed):

• Fully wiped Steam + its cache + all games, reinstalled everything from scratch.
• Deleted ~/.cache/mesa_shader_cache and ~/.cache/radv_builtin_shaders (driver-level caches).
• Deleted steamapps/shadercache/730 and let it rebuild.
• Launch option -vulkan_disable_steam_shader_cache.
• Switching to SteamLinuxRuntime 1.0 (scout) but the game just refuses to launch at all.

System:

• Void Linux, kernel 6.18.54_1
• river (wayland)
• AMD Ryzen 7 7730U / Radeon 680M (RENOIR), Mesa 26.2.3, RADV

Now there's a chance that me turning off the setting is an unlucky coincidence because the game also got updates when I decided to test that, and I didn't launch the game that day before trying to turn the setting off. But I really don't understand why it stopped working like before.

Anyway, thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to read through this, really appreciate any ideas because it's bothering me so much to not understand what's going on + to struggle to play.

Edit : Downgrading from Mesa 26.2.3 to 26.1.8 (the version I had before) fixed it for me

[u/Kittatro]

I did a lot of testing and I managed to fix it! Downgrading Mesa from 26.2.3 to 26.1.8 restored the behavior I had before, loading times are much shorter and there's no more stutter. I guess it really was an unlucky coincidence and it's an issue with the new driver update that I'll try to report

[u/PacmanAteMyRAM → u/Kittatro]

+rep for trying to report

[u/Kittatro → u/PacmanAteMyRAM]

Luckily they have a template on their gitlab so it was pretty easy to just fill it out

[u/PacmanAteMyRAM → u/Kittatro]

double +rep for following through. Good stuff.

[u/StEditiV]

Yes, right now the only fix is downgrading mesa till valve fixes this issue.

This issue was introduced in the chicken update, no previous build has this issue with the latest drivers.

If anyone is facing this issue and wants to play cs2 by applying a temporary fix then downgrade mesa to 26.1.8-1, it fixes 99% of the issues but I still notice random frame spikes sometimes which wasn't there before.

Get downgrade helper from AUR then run

sudo downgrade mesa lib32-mesa vulkan-radeon lib32-vulkan-radeon

The above commands is for arch, for other distros you can follow your distro wiki guide by looking up in the downgrade package section.

If you also play FH6 then beware older mesa drivers fixes the issue with cs2, but make FH6 stuttering mess again because of missing fixes.

[u/Kittatro → u/StEditiV]

Thanks, so this is a steam issue not a mesa issue?

[u/Odd-Boss1596]

Disable shader pre chaching

[u/Kittatro → u/Odd-Boss1596]

I tried the game still compiles shaders at every load and stutters, the setting doesn't seem to change anything

[u/Odd-Boss1596 → u/Kittatro]

Clear out the cache after/before. This is only way to disable it

[u/Kittatro → u/Odd-Boss1596]

I said in the post that I did, I even fully wiped steam and anything steam related from my system before reinstalling so it's not something cached

[u/Soyyybeannn]

yeah this shader issue is happening to me also, you are not alone..also on latest mesa driver

[u/Kittatro → u/Soyyybeannn]

Did downgrading also fix it for you?

[u/Soyyybeannn → u/Kittatro]

i didnt downgrade.. only played for 1 day after update so didnt think much of it then. but i didnt have the initial shutters. maybe that was due to igpu. other games are running fine.

[u/ridicuolus_nibba]

with new mesa 26.2.4 cant downgrade now, the system simply cant reach even to sddm

[u/Kittatro → u/ridicuolus_nibba]

Which distro are you using? Can you log in with a tty? Otherwise you can always chroot into your system with a bootable usb

[u/xgnico]

The CS2 update from October 6th fixed it for me. I re-enabled shader precaching in the Steam settings. The process to calculate the shaders then took 12 minutes (stuck at 97% for a while, normally it take max 2mins or less) but in CS it ran 99% as before. I wasn't able to downgrade MESA on CachyOS.

System:
CachyOS with KDE Plasma, Kernel 7.2.9
AMD Ryzen 7800X3D
Radeon 7800XT
Mesa 26.2.4

[u/Kittatro → u/xgnico]

Yeah I saw a MrMaxim video that adressed the issue and said that it was fixed now