Changing Shader Cache Location

[Tefnacht]

So,

 

bit of an unusual question for my unusual situation. Please spare me the “reinstall windows,” “buy better 'puter,” “haha you're poor” comments... nah, go nuts. I know I invited those now ?

 

Here is the thing. My computer is on the potato side of things and doesn't even meet the minimum specs for Starfield. I got a 4GB GPU (its a RX 460, queue laughter) an i5 6600K, not overclocked and 16GB DDR3. So. Yeah. Damn.

 

However, I got the game working in potato mode. Basically disabling all shadows does the trick for the GPU and I managed to compensate the lack of cores on the i5 by using BES to limit Starfield CPU usage to 98% so the game doesn't completely choke out the entire OS and stutter and freeze every few seconds.

 

It looks like ass but hey, stable 30 FPS and I don't mind. Problem is the game crashes. A lot. Not like every ten minutes but after an hour or two it just CTDs. Usually with a two to three second freeze preceding the crash. Usually after entering a completely new area. I also get the occasional infinite loading screen. What is poison to my game are the crafting and research menus. I need to drop a save before going in there because they WILL crash the game 8 out of 10 attempts.

 

The game is installed on a SATA3 SSD. That is drive F: in my system, the only SSD I got, the rest are spinners, including drive C where my Windows 10 is installed.

 

Internet consensus is the game really needs that SSD to run. Today I updated my GPU drivers and while watching the game slowly rebuilding its 7000+ shaders it suddenly came to me: Where the fuck are those stored?

Sure enough: %LocalAppData%\Starfield\ and %LocalAppData%\AMD\DxcCache. On my C drive. The HDD. The spinner. The slow one. Because today software is like a messy roommate that leaves their crap all over the place.

 

I did some hoop jumping to convince Starfield not to use the C drive as much as possible. First with .INI edits and now I use a SFSE plugin that forces the game to use the data folder on F: to load mods, message of the day crap and photo mode pictures. Only my save and .INI files are still on the HDD.

 

And as I noticed today: So is the GPU shader cache.

 

Now, I don't know if this could even be an issue. I think they are just loaded at startup because they're not big. It is building them that takes time. Buuuuut, I am annoyed that I have seemingly no control over this. I have no experience with this kind of thing and the only answer Google came up with was: “Would be a nice feature if we could move the shader cache location.”

 

So. Here we are. Is it possible to change where AMD drivers and the game stuff their prebuilt shaders? Do you think this could even cause crashing? Got any clever ideas how to fudge this without breaking every other game I have installed?

 

Edit: C : turns into ?

Edited October 5, 2023 by Tefnacht

[Akzyra]

You could create symlinks in %localappdata% to "redirect" the path to the SSD:
https://www.howtogeek.com/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/

 

Hardlinks will not work since it is a different drive.
Short tutorial, read up on it for more info:

1. First move the folders from their original location in %LocalAppData% to their new location.
   The symlink will be created in their place.
   Also create backups just in case
2. Create symlinks from the original location to the new location:
   You need to run CMD.EXE as admin!
   mklink /D %LocalAppData%\Starfield F:\Starfield_Appdata
   mklink /D %LocalAppData%\AMD\DxcCache F:\AMD_DxcCache

 

Change paths as you like. If a path contains spaces, write in quotes: "F:\Some Folder\AMD DxcCache"

Edited October 5, 2023 by Akzyra

[Tefnacht]

Thanks a ton

 

It works like a charm. I moved the folders over to the SSD and put symlinks in their place. I'll keep an eye on it to see if it makes any difference. Thanks again.