What you need to know
SCSKiller pre-compiles game shaders into NVIDIA’s driver cache to reduce shader-related stutter. Hardware Unboxed reported a 25% performance gain in Jedi Survivor and improved low frame rates in Tiny Tina Wonderlands, though some tested games showed no benefit.
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Shader compilation stutter has been one of the biggest problems plaguing modern PC gaming. However, a new open-ompiling as many shaders as possible, called SCSkiller. Hardware Unboxed on YouTube reviewed and benchmarked the application and saw massive performance improvements in some titles, including Jedi Survivor, which saw a 25% performance uplift using SCSKiller
SCSKiller is a third-party app that intercepts shaders at the engine level and pre-compiles them to NVIDIA’s driver cache. The app is compatible with virtually all game engines out there, with native support for Unreal Engine 4, Unreal Engine 5, Unity and a few others. For game engines that it cannot integrate with well, there’s a special recording feature where SCSkiller will detect shaders during live gameplay and pre-compile those shaders after recording.
In testing with an RTX 5090 and Ryzen 7 9800X3D, Hardware Unboxed found some massive performance improvements in games that are not well optimized and have highly problematic shader compilation stutter. In Jedi Survivor (a game notorious for having performance problems), SCSKiller improved performance by around 25% on an RTX 5090, boosting frame rates from 97 FPS to 123 FPS using the Epic preset with Ray Tracing enabled at 4K with DLSS in performance mode.
- Read more: Unreal Engine 5 may be getting Microsoft’s DirectX 12 Advanced Shader Delivery
Tiny Tina Wonderlands is another game that benefitted massively from SCSKiller; running the game without SCSKiller, Hardware Unboxed saw 1% and 0.1% lows below 30 FPS despite having an average frame rate of nearly 190 FPS. The 1% and 0.1% performance was so bad that Hardware Unboxed noted the game was suffering massively from visible stuttering during gameplay. Enabling SCSKiller completely fixed the issue, improving 1% lows to 143 FPS and 0.1% lows to 102 FPS. However, not every game benefited from SCSKiller. Silent Killer: Townfall and Grounded 2 were some other titles Hardware Unboxed tested and found no performance improvement from using SCSKiller.
How do SCSKiller’s performance gains vary across GPUs and CPUs beyond Hardware Unboxed’s test system?
There are no measured SCSKiller gains for other GPUs or CPUs in this story. Hardware Unboxed tested an RTX 5090 with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and found that results varied by game: Jedi Survivor gained around 25%, while Silent Killer: Townfall and Grounded 2 showed no improvement.
Does SCSKiller need shaders to be recorded again after a game or driver update?
SCSKiller can record shaders during gameplay for engines it cannot integrate with well, then pre-compile those shaders after recording. Whether a game or driver update requires another recording is not specified.
How does SCSKiller differ from the shader-compilation projects from AMD and Microsoft mentioned in the article?
SCSKiller is a third-party app that intercepts shaders at the engine level and pre-compiles them to NVIDIA’s driver cache. It supports several engines directly and can record shaders during gameplay for games it cannot integrate with well. Unlike the AMD and Microsoft projects mentioned, it is described as working in virtually every game with shader compilation. “Microsoft’s new Advanced Shader Delivery game tech uses the cloud to reduce friction” separately describes Microsoft’s approach as using the cloud to pre-compile game assets; no comparable technical detail is given for AMD’s project.
Which Unreal Engine 4, Unreal Engine 5, or Unity games have been tested with SCSKiller’s native integration?
Hardware Unboxed tested SCSKiller in Jedi Survivor, Tiny Tina Wonderlands, Silent Killer: Townfall, and Grounded 2. The story says SCSKiller has native support for Unreal Engine 4, Unreal Engine 5, and Unity, but it does not identify which of those games used native integration or which engine each game runs on.
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Hardware Unboxed’s testing reveals that SCSKiller provides a legitimate method of boosting performance in games that suffer heavily from shader compilation stutter. Performance improvements will vary depending on the title and system hardware, but it is proven to be an effective app for removing shader compilation stutter in at least some titles. The best part of the app is that it works in virtually every game with shader compilation, a feat that has not been achieved by other similar projects including AMD and Microsoft.
