Steam Client Update Fixes Linux Shortcuts, Adds Vulkan Pre-Compiled Shaders

[Michael]

This update completely breaks Steam benchmarking support..... :/

[Guy1524]

It would probably use the built-in mechanism to Vulkan: https://www.khronos.org/registry/vul...lineCache.html

The data would be retreived from vkGetPipelineCacheData, stored in a binary file, loaded back into ram, and fed to vulkan when the consumer runs the application. (Using the pipelineCache parameter to the vkCreateGraphicsPipelines function)

Also, AFAIK, the cache is specific to the driver and OS it was created on, which seems feasible for valve to accomplish.

[nanonyme]

This update completely breaks Steam benchmarking support..... :/

Have you contacted them to ask for workarounds?

[M@yeulC]

I would tend to think that it works trough the Steam overlay, which is preloaded and usually intercepts the calls to the various graphics APIs, but a confirmation confirmation would be nice.
This was announced a while ago, but it's nice to see it coming

So, no overlay, no cache? Is the cache fetched at install time, or at run time?

[Masush5]

I wonder if there is a way to disable this. Sometimes you might want to recompile the shader binaries because the compiler improved, yielding more efficient code, etc.

[DIRT]

The steam Vulkan shader caches work very well.

just tried it. R9 290. Previously I had to run the talos principle Vulkan benchmark twice to eliminate the first time stutters. Now it runs optimally right off the bat... Average fps gain on first time run was only 1-2 fps on the benchmark sequence but all the momentary stutters are now eliminated.

I did find that switching to a low latency kernel made first time stutters unnoticeable in opengl games. Wine, wine gallium9, and opengl games I benchmarked all run like I pre-ran them before hand. Net fps wasn't really effected, everything scored the same even when doing other "work."