Steam just added new features on its latest update, the Steam Shader Pre-Caching that improve game load times and less shuttering. What is Steam Shader Pre-Caching? Shader Pre-Caching allows Steam to download pre-compiled GPU shaders matching your system configuration. This allows Vulkan and OpenGL games to load faster and improves framerate stability during gameplay.
If Steam Shader Pre-Caching is enabled, Steam will collect shaders from your system when needed. Enabling this feature may slightly increase disk and bandwidth usage. The maximum sized of Shader Pre-Caching is 18 MB.
Well, this is good news for games who has shuttering problem during gameplay, especially games that is based in OpenGL and Vulkan. Some of these games are PUBG or PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds which is heavy shader and this might help reducing the game shuttering when playing.
We will test and benchmark this new feature in games and let’s see if there are really improvement when this settings is enabled.
Though, The downside of it is it will use some bandwidth to uploads and analyze your shaders usage after each of your game. You also have option to disable this feature in the Steam Settings.
How to Enable/Disable Steam Shader Pre-Caching
- Go to Steam > Settings
- Then Shader Pre-Caching and tick the checkbox for Enable/Disable
What’s your thought on the latest Shader Pre-Caching of Steam? Are you excited to try it out? Let us know in the comment section below.