A game that meets a new effect has the GPU driver compile its shader on the spot, and the frame waits: that's shader compilation stutter. SCSKiller reads the shaders a game ships with, works out the pipelines it will build, and compiles them into the driver's cache ahead of time, in its own process with the game closed.

Features

  • Nvidia and AMD, DirectX 12 games, and DirectX 11 games on Nvidia.
  • Finds your games in Steam, Epic Games, EA app, GOG, Ubisoft Connect, Xbox (PC), Battle.net, PURPLE, HoYoPlay and Gaijin, plus games you add yourself.
  • Puts games known to stutter on top, with the reason, and marks games whose engine prepares its shaders itself.
  • Compiles again after a driver update, which clears the shader cache, on its own if you let it.
  • Optional recorder for games whose pipelines its files don't give: play a few minutes with it on, then compile. It also records alongside a mod that replaces shaders.
  • Frame times per session: with the recorder on, a game's page graphs your last session and marks shader stutters apart from other hitches. They stay on your PC.
  • Play button that starts the game through its store.
  • Community shader hash database for Patreon supporters: other players' recordings, so your games are covered without recording them first. Sharing yours is opt-in, anonymous and hash-only.
  • Leaves anti-cheat games alone beyond reading their files: no launching, no injecting, no recorder. The one exception is opt-in per game and confirmed every time: an offline session without EasyAntiCheat for ELDEN RING and ARMORED CORE VI, at your own risk.

What's New

  • Some users saw slower compiles on 1.2.4. This update fixes the problems we found while looking into it, each one below with why it happened.
  • Compiles with long chains of ray tracing pipelines keep going (The Callisto Protocol and Black Myth: Wukong with a community recording). Each pipeline in such a chain waits for the one it builds on, and 1.2.4 counted that wait as a driver hang, so the compile restarted the same stretch again and again.
  • A compile no longer stays at about 100% without finishing. At its end, the driver could hang while letting go of a ray tracing pipeline, and the compile waited for it forever. That step now has a time limit.
  • Compile clicked while SCSKiller checks a game's plan in the background now runs with your compile settings. 1.2.4 kept it as background work, at idle priority and with fewer threads.
  • Reading a game's shaders in the background no longer slows a compile. It ran at a higher priority than the compile and took up to a fifth off its speed. It now runs below it and waits until the queue is done.
  • The cache size shown is the size on disk again (NVIDIA). 1.2.4 opened the driver's cache files to measure how full they were, and showing a size doesn't need that.
  • "Not compatible" for games whose shaders the driver keeps under a different cache than the one SCSKiller fills (Black Myth: Wukong on AMD). 1.2.4 kept offering to compile such a game again, which could never help. The game page now says so and suggests clearing its cache. A driver update offers it again.
  • Cleaning up after an offline session deletes only SCSKiller's own files. After a session that ended abnormally, it could delete a mod's d3d12.dll or your own steam_appid.txt put in the game's folder later.
  • The recorder no longer crashes games that load a dxgi.dll mod like OptiScaler. It treated the mod's swap chain as Windows' own.
  • NetEase Protect (Aniimo) and Halo Infinite's Arbiter are recognised as anti-cheat, so the recorder stays out of them.
  • Special K beside a game is no longer taken for ReShade. Compiles of games that load RenoDX through Special K failed. They now show why they can't compile.