How to Clear the DirectX Shader Cache in Windows 11

What the shader cache is and where it lives

A shader is a small program the GPU executes for every effect — lighting, shadows, water. Compiling a shader from the game's source into GPU-ready code takes time, so Windows and the GPU drivers keep the results on disk and reuse them at the next launch. That is the shader cache: pure derived data, specific to your exact GPU and driver version.

A driver update starts a new cache and leaves the old one on disk, which is why several gigabytes can accumulate unnoticed on a gaming machine. Windows lists the category in Storage settings. Beyond the central D3DSCache folder, each vendor keeps its own directories.

• DirectX generic cache — %LOCALAPPDATA%\D3DSCache
• NVIDIA — %LOCALAPPDATA%\NVIDIA\DXCache and %LOCALAPPDATA%\NVIDIA\GLCache
• AMD — %LOCALAPPDATA%\AMD\DxCache, Dx9Cache and GLCache
• Intel — %LOCALAPPDATA%\Intel\ShaderCache
• Each folder holds compiled shaders for your exact GPU and driver version — nothing user-made inside

How to clear it — the built-in way and the manual way

The built-in route is the same Temporary files page used for other caches: Settings → System → Storage → Temporary files, wait for the scan, check “DirectX Shader Cache” and click Remove files. The manual route is just as legitimate. Close games and launchers (Steam, EA app and company), paste %LOCALAPPDATA%\D3DSCache into the Explorer address bar and delete everything inside; the vendor folders above can be emptied the same way.

AMD owners get a third option: Adrenalin has its own “Reset shader cache” under Settings → Graphics, which clears the AMD-side caches in one click. Deleting any of these folders is safe — no profiles, saves or settings live there. Files that refuse to delete simply mean a game is still using them, so close it first.

What to expect after clearing — and when to repeat

The first launch of each game after clearing stutters more and loads longer: the system is compiling shaders it used to read from cache. That is normal and fades within a session or two. Clearing helps against corrupted-cache symptoms — artifacts, freezes, crashes at launch — but it does not raise average FPS on a healthy system, so a weekly “cleanup” buys nothing except repeated stutter.

There are three moments when clearing makes sense: right after a GPU driver update, when graphical glitches appear out of nowhere, and after a big game patch that coincided with stutter. If the symptoms survive a cleared cache, the cause is elsewhere. Start with a clean GPU driver reinstall and verifying the game files.

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