Shader compilation stutters are one of the most annoying problems in modern PC games. Some games have only a few. Others can stutter badly during the first few hours of play. But now, a free tool has just been released, called SCSKiller, that aims to fix all shader compilation stutters in all DX12 and DX11 games.

What’s funny here is that this tool is not created by Microsoft, NVIDIA, AMD, Epic Games, or Intel. Instead, it’s created by a fan. It’s ironic, but this right here shows how dedicated PC gamers actually are.

But what is SCSKiller and what exactly does it do?

SCSKiller reads the shaders a game ships with, works out the pipelines it will build, and compiles them into your driver’s shader cache ahead of time, from its own process and with the game closed. So, when you launch the game, they’re already there.

SCSKiller currently works  with DirectX 12 games on NVIDIA and AMD GPUs. It also works with DirectX 11 games on NVIDIA GPUs.

The tool can find games from many PC stores and launchers. These include Steam, Epic Games, EA app, GOG, Ubisoft Connect, Xbox, Battle.net, PURPLE, HoYoPlay, and Gaijin.

SCSKiller can also show which games are known to have shader stutters. These games appear at the top of your library, along with the reason they may stutter. The tool can detect driver updates too. A new driver can clear the shader cache. When this happens, SCSKiller can compile the shaders again.

SCSKiller also comes with an optional recorder for games whose pipelines can’t be worked out from their files. For those games, you’ll have to play a few minutes with it on, then compile.

It’s also worth noting that the tool never touches anti-cheat games beyond reading their files. It will not launch, inject, or record. The one exception is opt-in, which can be done per game and can be confirmed every time you launch it.

BlueHeisenberg has also shared some pretty impressive results. Hogwarts Legacy had 1,014 stutters without the tool. With SCSKiller, it only had 87 stutters. Star Wars: Jedi Survivor had 9,038 stutters without SCSKiller. With it, it only had 11 stutters. Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, Silent Hill: Townfall, and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands had zero stutters with SCSKiller.

At this point, I should note that SCSKiller will only fix the shader compilation stutters. It will NOT fix the traversal stutters that some games have. For instance, Oblivion Remastered has major traversal stutters. SCSKiller will not fix those stutters.

All in all, this is a must-have tool for PC gamers. It is hard to believe that GPU makers or Microsoft did not come up with something like this first. Instead, the fix came from a fan. So, I am not exaggerating when I say this: BlueHeisenberg has made the whole gaming industry look bad.

You can go ahead and download it from this link.

Enjoy!