How can I verify if ubershaders are working on my system?

[themanuel]

I have a strong suspicion that something has happened on my system that is causing ubershaders not to work anymore.  When the feature came out, I was pleasantly surprised by how I could play any games with minimal stutter using hybrid US, even if I had not played that game before.  Now, after a few months of not using dolphin actively, I've noticed when I start a game without a prebuilt cache, the game stutters quite a bit whenever a new effect is encountered, signaling shader compilation.  This is the behavior dolphin would exhibit in my PC before the ubershaders feature.

I can see the ubershader cache files in my dolphin user folder so at least I know they are getting created.  I am also selecting the "Asynchronous (Ubershaders)" and "Compile Shaders Before Starting" options.

Is there a way to verify if dolphin is actually being able to use the shaders, perhaps by looking at the log or some other way?

The only thing I can think of is if perhaps a recent AMD driver update might have screwed ubershaders for me.

[morgoth32]

Delete the cache then try Tatsunoko vs Capcom if you own it. Any super move generate a lot of stuttering caused by shaders genaration in this game.

[themanuel]

Actually, I did try it yesterday and it was completely freezing in its tracks during shader generation. The question is whether this means that ubershaders are not working for me. I suspect that's the case but have not way to verify it.

[Shadorino]

Try deleting the whole "Dolphin Emulator Folder", start fresh.
Also use DDU (in safe mode) to clean remove your GPU drivers, and then reinstall them.

[themanuel]

I can simply run in portable mode instead but I should probably fiddle with the drivers a bit.
I would still like to find a way to verify if ubershaders are actually working, if that's possible.

[Shadorino]

Well, to be sure you can run a game that you know well and have played through during the old dark days with no Ubershaders.

If you can give me your list of games, perhaps we have some in common, and I'll be able to tell you exactly where there's a shader stutter on a giving scene.
I have 2 in mind right now :
one during the intro of Star Fox Adventures, and another on the first circuit of Mario Kart Wii.

[themanuel]

(05-10-2018, 03:57 AM)Shadorino Wrote: Well, to be sure you can run a game that you know well and have played through during the old dark days with no Ubershaders.

If you can give me your list of games, perhaps we have some in common, and I'll be able to tell you exactly where there's a shader stutter on a giving scene.
I have 2 in mind right now :
one during the intro of Star Fox Adventures, and another on the first circuit of Mario Kart Wii.

Well that's the thing, for sure Tatsunoko vs. Capcom has massive stutters for me now the first time something shows up but I also played MKW and MG2 and both stuttered on the first few screen while generating new shader caches.  In game all of these flow like honey as long no new effects appear.  This wasn't happening to me before with ubershaders so everything points at the feature not working but it's not proof.  I was hoping there would be something in the log perhaps that indicated if dolphin could not use the ubershaders it compiled.

[Shadorino]

Have you tried performing the clean install of the latest drivers with DDU ?
If that doesn't' help, try clean installing previous versions of the driver.
Also there was an optimum backend to use with Ubershaders according to GPU brand, don't know if if it's still 100 % accurate anymore.

This was written on the Ubershaders 2.0 article on July 30th 2017 :


AMD on Windows :

– Use D3D for Hybrid mode.
– Use D3D or Vulkan for Exclusive Mode.
– The AMD OpenGL driver is just slow in general.

Intel on Windows :

– Use D3D for Hybrid mode. Exclusive Mode does work, but Intel iGPUs are currently not fast enough to run it at fullspeed even at 1x native.
– Driver generates variants with OpenGL meaning stuttering.
– The Vulkan driver only supports Skylake+, and is too buggy to be worth using currently.


Doesn't hurt checking, but make sure that Dolphin is using your AMD GPU and not your processor's iGPU.

[themanuel]

I'm selecting the my discrete GPU on the drop-down menu. In fact I have the integrated one disabled on the BIOS and it doesn't even show up in the Dolphin settings. Also, I use D3D per the recommendation as OpenGL is worse whether I use US or not. I'll definitely try fresh drivers when I get home tonight, as it's the only thing that could possibly make sense to me. Ubershaders were working great for me before and now I get all this stutter even with the older versions of dolphin that were working previously.

Thanks for the tips.

[Shadorino]

It seems to be the most probable yes. It's either that or the recent Windows 10 1803 update. In that case you're screwed for at least the next 5 months.