Stuttering occurs even with fully built shader cache.

[el_rika]

I'm playing through RE4, the second time.

So, i was under the impression that once you go through an area/cutscene and the shader cache builds bigger and bigger, when you reply it, it should be smooth, with no stuttering.

This is partially true, in the sense that if i reply that scene/cutscene again, right after i played it, it is flawlessly smooth.
However, of i go further in the game, then reload that cutscene, it will stutter just like the first time, even though the shader cache is already huge.

I'm using Async(Ubershaders). Tested on both Windows and Android. (Sync Ubershaders are wayy too taxing for my specs).

Audio Stretching on/off makes no difference
Compile Shaders Before Starting on/off same deal

Is this normal, to have stutters even with shader cache and .uidcache already built for the entire game?

[vlad54rus]

Are Sync Ubershaders complelety unusable, even at 1x Internal Resolution? Also, shader compilation isn't the only source of stuttering, it can be texture decoding, JIT cache or something else.

[el_rika]

Yes, sync ubershaders are completely unusable sadly (10 - 15 fps)

So, there's more cache-ing going on then.

What is strange is that if i reply a scene without advancing too much (half an hour maybe), it is flawless. After i play an extra hour and come back to that scene, it stutters...like it forgets or overwrites the shaders from that scene after a short while... (the size gets bigger and bigger though, for both .cache file and .uidcache)

[el_rika]

So, these past days i've bee experimenting with this idea i had.

After some 5 - 6 hours of playing RE4, i can confirm that the cause of the stuttering, even with a big shader cache file, is exactly this: the "size" of the file.

If the  .cache file gets too big (> roughly 7 MB), with a  .uidcache of more than ~ 600 KB, Dolphin starts to have trouble keeping it smooth on replay, especially towards the end of the segment (the shader stutter is most noticeable in some cutscenes and always happends at the exact same spots when the issue is present).
The only way to deal with this is to create sepparate cache/uidcache files for each segment of the game, no longer than ~ 1 hour of gameplay. In RE4's case this means 2 or 3 files for each chapter.
An automatic portioning by Dolphin would seem like a fix for this, though i dn't know if its possible.

Keeping in mind the fact that, while playing on a backed up shader cache of the small size, the cache keeps getting bigger for some reason, this is kind of a tricky aspect as well.
(Is there an option in Dolphin to only "read" cache, instead of also creating more at the same time?)