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PainkilleR 25 Oct @ 5:39am
Nvidia's DirectX9 drivers don't cache shaders on Windows
It seems like Nvidia drivers are bugged and don't cache DirectX 9 shaders. Can somebody confirm/deny that?
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Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:
This is possible with any Driver depending on some settings or under a circumstance of corruption or other similar issues.

Best bet is first go wipe all existing shader cache, then DDU wipe the drivers and software.l in safe mode. Reboot and install latest supported GPU driver. Reboot when done and then configure the NVIDIA control panel. Such as setting Shader Cache to around 10GB or simply set to Unlimited.

Caching won't happen until the game has been run again now at least once. Most DX9 games don't use modern methods of shader caching though like DX11, 12 and Vulkan based games do. Most of those older games used tbeir own methods and usually placed a temp file some place for such a thing, if it even used that method at all. So you won't find shader cache for DX9 games within the AppData folder structure like you would for modern games.

And with modern GPUs they have enough VRAM to where everything an old DX9 game would need to do, should actively fit in that VRAM space. Since even old GPUs of that era, with VRAM sizes such as 512/768 MB and 1GB were capable of doing that just fine for most games running DX9 or OpenGL. However for those older games it may help to force enable Triple Buffering as well. Something you usually want disabled for modern day games. Many of those older games are also 32bit at the core and wouldn't be able to use beyond most likely some where around 1-4 GB of VRAM anyways, if most DX9 games can even use that much at one time.
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Bad 💀 Motha 25 Oct @ 5:53am 
This is possible with any Driver depending on some settings or under a circumstance of corruption or other similar issues.

Best bet is first go wipe all existing shader cache, then DDU wipe the drivers and software.l in safe mode. Reboot and install latest supported GPU driver. Reboot when done and then configure the NVIDIA control panel. Such as setting Shader Cache to around 10GB or simply set to Unlimited.

Caching won't happen until the game has been run again now at least once. Most DX9 games don't use modern methods of shader caching though like DX11, 12 and Vulkan based games do. Most of those older games used tbeir own methods and usually placed a temp file some place for such a thing, if it even used that method at all. So you won't find shader cache for DX9 games within the AppData folder structure like you would for modern games.

And with modern GPUs they have enough VRAM to where everything an old DX9 game would need to do, should actively fit in that VRAM space. Since even old GPUs of that era, with VRAM sizes such as 512/768 MB and 1GB were capable of doing that just fine for most games running DX9 or OpenGL. However for those older games it may help to force enable Triple Buffering as well. Something you usually want disabled for modern day games. Many of those older games are also 32bit at the core and wouldn't be able to use beyond most likely some where around 1-4 GB of VRAM anyways, if most DX9 games can even use that much at one time.
Last edited by Bad 💀 Motha; 25 Oct @ 5:57am
#1
PainkilleR 25 Oct @ 6:14am 
Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:
Most DX9 games don't use modern methods of shader caching though like DX11, 12 and Vulkan based games do. Most of those older games used tbeir own methods and usually placed a temp file some place for such a thing, if it even used that method at all. So you won't find shader cache for DX9 games within the AppData folder structure like you would for modern games.
Thanks! I actually didn't know that DirectX 9 shaders were never cached by Nvidia drivers. That explains everything.
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Date Posted: 25 Oct @ 5:39am
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