Steam gains support for shader pre-caching

Valve has updated the Steam client and one of the big feature additions is support for Shader Pre-Caching. On systems with cards that support this technology, users can expect lower load times and smoother framerates. This feature is exclusively for games that use OpenGL or Vulkan.

New feature: Shader Pre-Caching. Whenever possible, depending on hardware and driver support, Steam can download pre-compiled shaders for your specific video card. This reduces load times and in-game stuttering during the first few launches of OpenGL- and Vulkan-based games on supported hardware. This feature may use a small amount of additional bandwidth as Steam uploads and analyzes a shader usage report after each run of the game. The feature can be disabled via a new entry in the Settings dialog.

However, VideoCardz notes reviewers and benchmarkers will need to be careful that the feature is deactivated as it can mess up comparisons.