Almost everytime i start Steam (specially since last few days), i see all games download updates, again and again.
I have no clue what actually is downloaded, all my games don’t recieve developer patches.
I already switched from Experimental-Proton to a final and fixed 8.XX version in hope i see less frequent updates, but no way… I can start 3-4 times a day the Steamclient and it will download around 500-1000MByte for my 10 installed games each Steam start…
What is going on here? Why Steam want to destroy my SSD with perma write jobs, like no tomorrow?
Under Windows there is only a update happening when the developer actually release a new game update, but the Steam Linux client show a total differend behavior.
Does anyone know how to get rid of this endless downloads?
Nothing special, just my already 10 installed games… it just show downloads for each installed (random) game but i don’t see any details or closer information what the download is exactly about…
Sometimes steam download files for 7/10 games and on the next Steam start it download files for 5 games.
I deactivated Shader Precaching since few hours and no download yet, i report back tomorrow if i see downloads again.
There actually is the info most of the time, in the line where the game is the i bubble, it says wether it is shader update or game update. Look closer on the left hand side in the Download page. If there is nothing it is most likely a shader cache validation update.
I think it was maybe 20% of my games where i saw the I bubble for shader-ache info… then the other 80% must be shader cache validation.
Any idea how to reduce it?
I startet 3 times steam again and no download yet btw. it looks like deactivation shader cache helps… but the key point is, how big is the performance difference between enable/disable
There is something called sarcasm…
Was 3 emoji’s not enough?
I think it must be pretty tough to get a Crypto miner from a Steam game… if this is even possible at all, it must be some crazy stuff.
Only you can know that because it varies from game to game and system to system. Without shader pre-caching the game will compile shaders on-the-fly the first time they are required, this may or may not result in some amount of stuttering when it happens.
FWIW I saw exactly the behaviour described in the latest posts on that thread. It seemed to have been fixed a few weeks ago, the constant downloads stopped, then a few days ago it all started again
In the end all I can suggest is that if you don’t notice any problem with it turned off then leave it off.
I wish there is a option with rightclick in library and to select each game if we want the individual game with shader caching enable or disable… to bad that the Steam Support is some kind of trash, when it comes to problems like this.
I disabled Shader Pre Caching and deleted the ShaderCache content from Steam folder, restarted Steam and will see how it now behaves with the new Graphics Pipeline Library (answering my own question above) that should be implemented in current AMD and NVIDIA drivers.
Having no pre-shader cache can introduce stutters and increase load times. I am not a fan of Valve, but they went all in on Proton and their Steam Deck. I don’t own one, but I am happy they finally got one or two things right in this, and it’s actually open source.
I have read that people get better framerates in Elden Ring on a Steam Deck, compared to a RTX 4090 in Windows. (With less resolution and graphics settings obviously, but still…) The main factor is because of how they implemented the pre-shader cache, and I thought Proton relied on this even more so. (Correct me if I’m wrong.)
Aside from bandwidth and storage space, I don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t want it. I think the worst part is you have to build the cache from scratch when you touch anything: The GPU driver, app/game version, I assume Proton itself… But that’s just like playing without the cache and not saving the compiled shaders.
Steamdeck has pre compiled cache as far as I know. A reason to not want the pre cached shaders is that now recent drivers have new things that work well enough with Proton to limit the stutters generated by the shader compilation while gaming. I disabled it and did not notice issues tonight in Hunt Showdown regarding added stutters while playing.
Search for Proton and Graphics Pipeline Library introduced during last year apparently (before there was DXVK Async in Proton-GE but it was removed due to unfixed issues and the arrival of Graphics Pipeline Library in Proton and on both AMD and NVIDIA).
So far so good, I don’t think I will re-enable the feature as the constant download these days and the low bandwidth I have don’t mix well. See for yourself how it goes on your hardware and make your own decision.
Just read it and think about how stupid that sounds, no offense.
