Inside the Marvel Rivals Shader Bottleneck: Benchmarks, Cpu Spikes, and Load Times Tested
By Alexander Ross
The most infuriating scenario reported across community threads occurs when Marvel Rivals re-compiles its entire library on every single game launch. A properly configured system should only compile shaders once per patch or driver update. When the game rebuilds them daily, the underlying DirectX 12 shader cache is almost always overflowing or getting wiped by external disk utilities.
By default, graphics drivers allocate conservative limits to disk storage. The standard allocation in older software packages was capped at a measly 1GB. Given that modern competitive titles compile hundreds of complex effects, a single match of Marvel Rivals alongside another installed title will instantly purge existing cache entries. When you relaunch the game, the engine detects missing entries, realizes the index is incomplete, and restarts the full pre-pass from zero percent.
To combat these recurring stalls, graphics card vendors have re-engineered how driver suites handle pre-passes. NVIDIA launched NVIDIA Auto Shader Compilation to move processing routines dynamically off critical launch threads and into background GPU threads during idle states. For rigs running modern cards, leveraging this system prevents the operating system from locking user input while waiting for assets to resolve.
Alexander Ross has covered the video game industry for a decade, writing deep dives on game design, esports tournaments, VR developments, and gaming culture.
