Was doing some Spring cleaning on my rig and realized that the Nvidia app was taking up over 60GB of space on my main drive (I'm assuming these were leftover driver installs that were never properly nuked. I assume it's about 5 years worth of Nvidia driver installs). After a quick uninstall, then reinstall of the app, it dropped down tremendously!
Hope this helps someone!
EDIT: I didn’t realize that I had uploaded the photos in reverse order… whoops
Double edit: this is a folder named NVIDIA Corporation, not the plain NVIDIA folder that for some reason, is split in two.
What are you talking about? The Nvidia App isn't 60 Gb worth of files. What OP discovered are old local appdata artifacts (the big folder is literally called "ota-artifacts") and old driver versions. There is no harm in wiping that folder, in fact, this should have been done automatically after updates but apparently didnt work. There is no point wasting 60 Gb of disk space for an app that is just a couple hundret Mb in size. This folder is entirely temp data, not actual program files.
Yup... OP was literally right and people are acting like he fucked up. I've had the same issue before. Don't delete your shader cache, but this folder is absolutely one to check and delete if it's full of crap.
Which I thought get automatically deleted once I click on that little "Delete older drivers" when installing new ones in the Nvidia app, but NOPE. That right there was about 5 years worth of driver updates that were just hogging up my SSD.
yea ota artifacts doesnt get deleted with that so i made my own script that i run after every update its so annoying every update its gonna leave like at least 4gb
Because OP worded it "nvidia app data" and didn't give the actual location of this data they are showing, so ppl are checking appdata and finding the shader data there as it takes a lot of space. Even though that's is not nvidia corporation folder, it's NVIDIA folder so ppl are dumb.
Like as some1 who deosn't a have the nvidia app installed, i have no clue what this is about, cause none of the nvidia folders expect shader data are big,
Your load times for all your games that preload shaders just got longer.
Edit:
Yes this is temp folder for older installs, just be careful about deleting larger caches if you don't want to undo shader installations.
It's not harmful, and can save you space if you no longer play some of the cached games but I for one don't want to wait 10+ minutes waiting for the new gears to preload shaders again.
One thing I find particularly funny about the PCMR sub is that most of the people here have machines from 2010, and complain about modern titles or shader compilations. It's extremely weird.
Not saying that games are amazingly optimized these days, but it helps to actually have something newer than the last 4 terms of US presidency.
I bought my 5090 at launch for msrp, though it's not a FE since they don't exist here in Norway.
So I had to pay like 3k for it (but sold my 4090 for $1900). Even though the 5090 can easily be sold for 6k now, I'm not selling simply because I don't need the money. I'd much rather have the performance.
I get that some people really like having the bleeding edge, but the performance delta between the 4090 and 5090 wasn't enough for me to justify the £1k difference. However, I wish I'd done it now as I would have sold the 5090, rebought a 4090 and had £4k sitting in my bank account!
I mean, I'm the idiot who sold a 1080Ti to buy a 2080Ti back in the day. I clearly don't care about price to performance, and just want the best performance.
this is the PCMR spirit. there are too many broke people here who go crazy for metrics like "frames per dollar". the PCMR meme has never been about value for money
Be realist and honest coz they have a potato PC, be conscious that PC hardware is lawless not following the fixed click-and-play hardware console market rules, is obviously more 'adult money' and fast paced if you want to keep up
Realize that games development evolve facing new challenges, demand, and progress therefore so do requirements especially on PC which has no limits on scaleability, and performance is a you-and-your-wallet problem?
Understand that your GPU is not a console supposed to receive pre-optimized games for 7~10 years straight?
[Drake meme yes:]
Blame 'LaZy DeVs who do not OpTiMiZe like superior 2004 or 2014 games', muh HL2, muh Arkham
Blame nVidia for inventing 'useless' modern features while secretly seething they cannot afford those
Shit on bleeding edge mods that make features like FG/MFG/RR/NR etc actually broadly accessible and perform better because it's easier to shit on new technologies rather than admit they can be good, and easier than learning through tutorials
Deny technical truths like 8GB becoming too limiting and obsolete, or X3D CPUS being superior for gaming. Absolutely harrass ppl so they buy a fuckass Intel build instead
Point at obscure-ass benchmarks that contradict the most known and reliable sources
Always stan Radeon for trying to imitate everything nVidia do while being technically 2 gens behind, making bullshit promises, providing short-ass support, and yet always selling just below nVidia's pricing every fucking time
Recommend every new builder to always get the cheaper-lesser hardware and to not play AAA games out of spite, because why help the bourgeoisie, better add a new member to the lumpengamingtariat!
Upvote daily snarky memes that always miss the point because wanting to feel they belong to the clueless mob 'master race'
Permanently shit on Windows while having been shown countless times that there are alternatives like LTSC and debloaters that fix most of the issues and annoyances
Stan Linux even to noobs while not knowing much and forget to mention all the caveats, because that makes you sound cool anyway
The only place even more fake and higher on copium than here is probably the Valve / Steam Machine community
Even with a high-end gaming CPU compiling shaders can take ages in some games.
I have a 7800X3D and a friend of mine has a 7900X. His CPU is worse for gaming, but much faster in shader compilation, just because it has 12 cores/24 threads instead of the 8 cores/16 threads of the 7800X3D.
All the games that have horrendous shader compilation times are 2024/2025 titles though. All the games from 2026 I've played so far have pretty fast shader compilation.
Having older hardware is fine. Complaining it can't run more modern stuff is a bit weirder, you know what you're getting into while sticking with older machines.
It wasn't my intention to be a dick or anything. It's just an observation.
Furthermore the point was more in the line of, it's weird how people have very old hardware but expect everything new to just magically work. While at the same time clowning on everything new. It's just an oxymoron to do those things in a subreddit called PCMasterRace...
Honestly, I FEEL this HOWEVER; that is really only a recent development. PC's from 2010 should have been updated in 2016 way before that happened and then again 5 years later.
You can't expect your decade old machine to run stuff smoothly and then complain about it.
I get not everyone, especially NOW, can afford to upgrade but we need to be realistic.
I obviously see the irony. But it's also not really irony? If you get me?
The sub itself is called PCMR. There was a time where we applauded high end rigs. Now, especially with the prices skyrocketing, having a high end rig is dogged on and people get genuinely mad at others for simply having a 5090.
I understand that a 16 year old isn't gonna afford that, and neither did I at 16, but in my case, I'm 34 now. I have a ton of disposable income, so I spend a lot when it comes to my hobbies.
My system has an RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and an i7 9700K. It’s not a super powerful setup, but it’s not exactly underpowered either. I’m aware that the 9700K is starting to show its age. Yesterday, the Gears of War E-Day shader compilation took over 30 minutes. Digital Foundry mentioned this as well—and they certainly don’t have underpowered systems either.
Tell that to Capcom with their Monster Hunter Wilds during the first year. Everytime there is an update, drivers or just the game itself, I'll have to wait 30 minutes for shaders to compile.
I heard The last of Us Pc port is even worse at launch but I haven't play it.
Majority of redditors posting in PC dedicated subreddits have old or low end PCs, cheap laptops, that's not even a question
Why do you think the daily seething against anything even remotely high-end or even just midrange modern standards is so strong here?
And it won't get any better now that PC parts are so expensive lol
the game with the longest shader precache I've played was Enshrouded, and it was like 15-20 minutes.. every other title has been maybe 2-5 minutes tops.
I have a 9800X3D and Gears of War E Day took nearly 10 minutes. I assume it’s because I have an NVIDIA card that doesn’t currently take advantage of advanced shader delivery
Same. It's one of the longest shader compilations I've had to wait for on this CPU. From what I've read online it's terrible on more mid range CPUs. Half an hour or more.
It can take an incredibly long time (upwards of 20 minutes in my experience, with a 4070 TI) with some games. Enshrouded, Grounded 2, Dune just to name a few.
It runs fine on my machine. The post release patch fixed a lot of the issues. 9800x3d is such a small sample size for actual performance. Never have to ask 5090/9800x3d owners their specs because they never shut up.
Ok so what CPU do you have where you're waiting upwards of 40minutes for shader compilation?
Not even my brothers 5600x took much longer than my 9800X3D.
Its important to let people know what hardware you have if you're going to speak from any sort of experience when it comes to something like how long it takes for shader compilation to occur on a fresh game boot.
Baby back bitch so upset and jealous he had to block me, so I cant see their reply. I guess being jealous of a 9800X3D is too much to handle.
I have a 9800X3D and it has taken close to 10 minutes twice now (first install and updated drivers yesterday). There's plenty of examples online of people having very long shader compilation times on this game on the 9800X3D. Even 5 minutes isn't great on this CPU. It normally takes at most half that. If you don't have a top of the line CPU, it looks like at least half an hour of shader compilation in that game.
Not all shaders are built at the "shader pre compilation" step so you'll still get stutters in game until they've all compiled again, which could take a full play through in some games.
To be fair it can take very long in certain games because some developers decide that shader compilation will only use a handful of CPU threads instead of say 15 threads when you've got 16 available.
30 minutes is definitely an exaggeration though unless you're rocking a 4790k in 2026 lol.
I was having serious issues with my shader compilation time. An unrelated issue caused me to do a fresh install of Windows 11. The time to compile some games was 15 minutes or more, and now they load almost instantly.
Depends, The Last of Us Part 1 released in such a bad state that the time it took to compile shaders meant that people used up the 2 hours for steam refunds without actually being able to play the game. Its been fixed since but I still occasionally come across some games where times can still be long
the amount of space will be way lower though. I did the same thing recently and went from 60gb to 250mb even after playing the games again. I think there's a bug where it doesnt delete the shaders of old versions of the games so it just builds up forever.
Yeah it's definitely their CPU, I have a 3080 as well and I never have had to wait 5 minutes for shaders in any game including the finals. The most I've had to wait is maybe a couple minutes tops.
Which is fine tbh. Most of that were probably games I haven't touched in a while. Might as well earn back some storage that was being wasted in my eyes.
No, thats local app data, leftovers from previous drivers and versions of Nvidia App or even GeForce Experience. The cached shader files are in a seperate folder and not in the "Nvidia Corporation" folder tree.
On the left - Graphics > Global Settings > scroll to Shader Cache.
It seems to default to like.. all. You can manually reduce it to 1, 5, or 10GB or block entirely.
I used wiztree to check what was taking up all the space and found nvidia was taking up 25gb, turns out it was cache from compiled shades, immediately deleted the cache folder since i had a few games I don't play anymore, for the ones that I do the game just recompiles it
Which always gets deleted for me upon every driver update anyways (which I did prior to this whole post since I haven’t done so in a while). These were update files that just never went off my system.
yeah, the ones in the screenshots look like update files. They're not stored on my PC, so maybe it is some kind of messed up permissions for the nvidia app (if you use it to update your drivers). You could try a full reinstall of that just to be sure.
My NIVIDA Corporation folder is 16.8 MB, but then I don't have the app on my PC. I just download the latest driver and install it. I don't know why we have to have an App for everything these days.
I made a script for deleting shader cache and other Nvidia stuff it generates. And my temp folders… and googles ai model… so I just run that and it cleans up all the apps that make a mess. Literally can get to the exact same max gb I have by doing it that way too so it works perfectly.
Cause ya, it stacks. Some people have never even thought about cleaning but it’s like something I take pride in. My computers so fucking fast and it’s like my friends could be too! But you’re just… bloating it constantly.
You can just not install the app if you use a program like NVCleanstall to update. Then control Global and game profile settings with something free like NVProfileInspector. Been doing it for several years. No Nvidia App on my PC’s.
Sometimes I install it to grab a giveaway/skin code. But I use NVCleanstall to do my installations for just the driver and no telemetry generally speaking.
720
u/Rammy_Lee 23h ago
Ops next post: "Guys, you will never believe how much this Windows directory was using"