DDU - why is it important?

[Parisien_entraide]

What Nvidia advises is to empty the shaders' cache:

- During a graphics card change (same brand but different model) (1)
- During a major pilot version (branch) version or in case of problems (crash games) during a conventional update (2)


(1)But if we change brand (NVIDIA ---> AMD or Intel and vice versa) you must use DDU
(2) And, even if this does not pose any problems "in general", in the documentation of Nvidia for the pilots it is indicated clearly that one should never use a restoration point to put the old pilots for example...

[masonparker]

What specific issues or problems might arise if one does not empty the shaders' cache during a graphics card change or a major driver update, as advised by Nvidia?

[Theyetion1968]

I had a game crash after updating NVIDIA drivers, but didn't think to clear the shader cache. I'm not sure where exactly this cache is located on Windows 10? Is there a quick tool other than DDU that can help?

[Wagnard]

I had a game crash after updating NVIDIA drivers, but didn't think to clear the shader cache. I'm not sure where exactly this cache is located on Windows 10? Is there a quick tool other than DDU that can help?

If you are on recent drivers, you can go into safe mode and remove theses :
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\NVIDIA\DXCache
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\NVIDIA\DXCache

Btw, DDU will add a button in the next version to specifically clean the caches without actually wiping the drivers.