Playing on a PC doesn’t always guarantee a smooth experience. Unlike consoles, which use fixed hardware and a controlled software ecosystem, PC gaming faces more challenges due to the wide range of components and configurations available. Consoles allow developers to optimize games easily, while on PC, such optimizations often arrive later and aren’t always implemented properly, resulting in inconsistent performance.
Stuttering: The Main Enemy of PC Gaming
In an interview with Digital Foundry, Tom Petersen from Intel confirmed that stuttering is currently the biggest problem facing PC gaming. This issue is even more significant than general optimization problems, which have forced developers to rely heavily on upscaling and frame generation technologies in recent years.
Petersen explained what causes stuttering and discussed Intel’s monitoring tool, PresentMon. He also revealed that Intel is working on its own solution to address this issue, going beyond Microsoft’s current shader delivery system in Windows 11.
According to Petersen, Intel’s approach involves cloud-based precompilation of shaders. Once precompiled, these shaders are downloaded directly to the user’s PC. This means that when a game launches, the shaders are already optimized, significantly reducing stuttering. For now, this feature only works with DirectX 12 and a specific list of supported titles.
Intel also noted that the distribution of these precompiled shaders is done asynchronously. A background service on the user’s computer handles the downloads. However, this process can be heavy on system resources — every time a game or driver is updated, the shaders need to be recompiled.
