Mesa's Shader Disk Cache Now Enabled By Default

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Mesa's Shader Disk Cache Now Works With Multiple Architectures

With the recent roll-out of Mesa's on-disk shader cache, an initial limitation was that the entire cache would be erased if a user switched between 32-bit and 64-bit applications. That's now been fixed...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Mesa-Cache-Multi-Archs

[M@GOid]

Hum, I hope the problems I have with the environment variable did not slip to this release. CS:GO do not start and Deux Ex got graphics artifacts when I start Steam with MESA_GLSL_CACHE_ENABLE=1. Also, not related with the Mesa cache, Tomb Raider special hair effect is bugged in Mesa as March 3.

[tarceri]

Hum, I hope the problems I have with the environment variable did not slip to this release. CS:GO do not start and Deux Ex got graphics artifacts when I start Steam with MESA_GLSL_CACHE_ENABLE=1. Also, not related with the Mesa cache, Tomb Raider special hair effect is bugged in Mesa as March 3.

I had reports of issues with CS:GO in early versions but nothing recently. I've had no reports of issues with Deux Ex, please open a bug report if you still have issues. Thanks.

[Zan Lynx]

A comment on weird cache behavior. I saw a similar problem with someone's Windows machine a while ago. He had all kinds of problems with cached game shaders. And his Registry kept getting corrupt keys and his Windows updates failed to install.

Turned out to be RAM errors. THIS is why we should have ECC on consumer systems. And if you ever have weird, crazy PC issues, run a RAM test.

[ramrod]

I've been getting consistent crashes when running games through steam with cache turned on. If I run two different games back to back the second game will crash at startup. It seems to only happen with feral games, and while overlay is enabled.

[tarceri]

I've been getting consistent crashes when running games through steam with cache turned on. If I run two different games back to back the second game will crash at startup. It seems to only happen with feral games, and while overlay is enabled.

Can you be more specific, which games exactly? And when you say back to back do you mean you close the first one or leave it running? I can't reproduce any crashes.

[dungeon]

Also, not related with the Mesa cache, Tomb Raider special hair effect is bugged in Mesa as March 3.

Beautuful performing hair is more expected in the wild

[RussianNeuroMancer]

As I understand right now this code will save TGSI shader representation in case of r600g driver. But will this be changed to saving final hardware-specific shaders in the future version?

[smitty3268]

As I understand right now this code will save TGSI shader representation in case of r600g driver.

Yes.

But will this be changed to saving final hardware-specific shaders in the future version?

No. Not unless someone steps up and implements that code. Valve doesn't care about hardware that old, so they won't pay Tim to do it, and AMD almost certainly won't pay anyone either (they don't do anything solely related to r600g anymore unless it's shared with radeonsi), so it's up to the community if anyone cares.
It shouldn't be that difficult for anyone looking to add support, but it's also of less usefulness since the r600g compiler is faster and can't run on the most recent and typically more shader-heavy games anyway.

[Chewi]

If I recall correctly from several months ago, changing the hair effect setting requires the user to restart the game.

That is true although I found it only failed to take effect immediately, it didn't cause the hair to disappear! I can imagine the cache might have something to do with it though.