Nvidia Announces Automatic Shader Compilation – But What Does It Actually Do?

Nvidia announced a new feature designed to save you time this week – and it’s already available in beta form in the Nvidia app. Auto Shader Compilation (ASC) essentially prevents your existing shader cache from being wiped after a graphics driver update, as it automatically recompiles your shaders in the background after the update is complete and while your computer is idle. It doesn’t fix first time shader compilation stutters, but it may be a first step towards a wider solution there too.

Right now, ASC ought to prevent the annoying precompilation step needed when starting up a game for the first time after updating your GeForce drivers. That’s particularly useful for multiplayer games that you play regularly like Fortnite, Battlefield 6 or Arc Raiders, especially if your friends are waiting for you to get online.

The same feature also prevents stutters from shaders that aren’t included in that precompilation step, with the important proviso that you need to have generated those shaders manually at least once beforehand. That means “first play” stutters aren’t affected by this feature, though our experimental testing does reveal some interesting routes forward.

In short, it’s possible to copy shader cache files between different machines running the exact same graphics…