Steam Will Now Flush Its Stale Shader Cache To Help Save Space

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Steam Will Now Flush Its Stale Shader Cache

As a particularly important move for Linux gamers and enthusiasts where you may be riding frequent Git builds of new Mesa graphics drivers or even the bi-weekly point releases - compared to the multi-week/monthly update regiment for Windows graphics drivers - Valve's Steam client will now flush its stale shader cache upon GPU/driver changes. This is important for conserving disk space especially where storage constraints are possible like with the Steam Deck...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-Flush-Stale-Cache

[linuxgeex]

For the people who get their nose out of joint when people want to make money using Open Source Software - here's a classic example of why it's important that OSS be economically viable for real world products. If Valve wasn't making the Steam Deck, they wouldn't have a product that is adversely affected by bloating shader cache, so they wouldn't have a motivation to develop this fix and push it, for the benefit of all concerned. So please, try to be a little more open minded about people and companies having a good reason to give a damn and improve OSS, and recognise that financial gains are a reasonable motivation. Same with any charity work. If all charities could never be profitable then no charity would ever grow to a point that it could do any good for its causes. If everyone who works for the greater good of humanity automatically loses the right to be compensated fairly, then that mandates a world in which really, nobody should do that good work, because it is demanded that they suffer unfair work conditions.

[darkbasic]

Is there any option to keep the stale caches for those who need to bisect?

[Linuxxx]

Now that we have confirmation of Michael actually having access to a Steam Deck, I fully expect to see a benchmark shootout between schedutil vs. performance, both plugged & on battery.

Interesting times ahead!

[loganj]

i thought they remove the useless cache by default with every new driver update.

[kokoko3k]

For the people who get their nose out of joint when people want to make money using Open Source Software - here's a classic example of why it's important that OSS be economically viable for real world products. If Valve wasn't making the Steam Deck, they wouldn't have a product that is adversely affected by bloating shader cache, so they wouldn't have a motivation to develop this fix and push it, for the benefit of all concerned. So please, try to be a little more open minded about people and companies having a good reason to give a damn and improve OSS, and recognise that financial gains are a reasonable motivation. Same with any charity work. If all charities could never be profitable then no charity would ever grow to a point that it could do any good for its causes. If everyone who works for the greater good of humanity automatically loses the right to be compensated fairly, then that mandates a world in which really, nobody should do that good work, because it is demanded that they suffer unfair work conditions.

Quite the opposite!
I think you didn't understood properly, or it's just me (?).

What we're talking about here is Steam's shader cache.
They went ahead and fixed their own problem only now, because they've interest in doing so.
Till now Valve just didn't care about polluting your hard drive.
I'd rethink your statements all the way around.

[schmidtbag]

I wasn't aware stale caches were kept in the first place. This is a welcome change.

[M@GOid]

Recently I simply disabled Steam cache here. With over 200 games installed, it was a daily parade of downloads. And Steam stopped indicating what was a cache download or a game update. And it simply would re-download cache for the same games again even if my drivers weren't updated.

To be honest, I don't see all that difference during gameplay. Games that have stutter continue to have stutter. If there is a difference, I didn't noticed it.

Here is a Idea for a Phoronix benchmark, FPS and loading time with Steam Cache on and off.

[skeevy420]

Recently I simply disabled Steam cache here. With over 200 games installed, it was a daily parade of downloads. And Steam stopped indicating what was a cache download or a game update. And it simply would re-download cache for the same games again even if my drivers weren't updated.

To be honest, I don't see all that difference during gameplay. Games that have stutter continue to have stutter. If there is a difference, I didn't noticed it.

Here is a Idea for a Phoronix benchmark, FPS and loading time with Steam Cache on and off.

Same here. All the cache updates can be ridiculous if you have a large library. I'd rather deal with some stutter when it generates the cache it needs over all the downloading. Plus it's not like I can play each one of the 200+ games I have in a meaningful time span so it's just a waste of drive space to have all that cache.

Oh, there would have to be three benchmarks: On, Off First Run, Off Second Run. Off has to be ran twice to see if Generated Cache is better or worse than Steam Cache. It's safe to assume that Off First Run will be the worst of them all. On vs Off Second Run, however, would be interesting to see.

[mdedetrich]

Same here. All the cache updates can be ridiculous if you have a large library. I'd rather deal with some stutter when it generates the cache it needs over all the downloading. Plus it's not like I can play each one of the 200+ games I have in a meaningful time span so it's just a waste of drive space to have all that cache.

Oh, there would have to be three benchmarks: On, Off First Run, Off Second Run. Off has to be ran twice to see if Generated Cache is better or worse than Steam Cache. It's safe to assume that Off First Run will be the worst of them all. On vs Off Second Run, however, would be interesting to see.

Well how bad the cache stutter depends on the game. For some types of games (especially multiplayer) this can be game breaking (pun intended).

You don't want to have a massive stutter when you enter a new level on a multilayer game that causes you to die.