Restore full Vulkan frame rates after a driver update by clearing stale shader caches and verifying driver state on Windows 11.
A fresh GPU driver often invalidates **Vulkan shader caches** and resets power settings. Clearing the cache and re-measuring one change at a time usually brings FPS back to the pre-update baseline.
Pick one Vulkan title (DOOM Eternal, Red Dead Redemption 2 in Vulkan mode, Baldur's Gate 3 Vulkan). Run the same scene for 60 seconds and note the average and 1% low FPS. This is the number every later step is measured against.
Open **Device Manager**, expand **Display adapters**, right-click your GPU and open **Properties → Driver**. Check the driver date and version match what the vendor site lists. A rolled-back or partially installed driver often causes the regression.
Vulkan pipeline caches from the old driver are the single biggest cause of post-update stutter and low FPS. Close all games, then clear the vendor cache folder and the common Vulkan cache locations.
del /q /s "%LOCALAPPDATA%\NVIDIA\DXCache\*"
del /q /s "%LOCALAPPDATA%\NVIDIA\GLCache\*"
del /q /s "%LOCALAPPDATA%\AMD\DxCache\*"
del /q /s "%LOCALAPPDATA%\AMD\VkCache\*"
del /q /s "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Temp\NVIDIA Corporation\*"Run the same 60-second scene and compare. If FPS is still low, open the NVIDIA Control Panel or AMD Software and set the global power mode to **Prefer maximum performance** (NVIDIA) or disable **Radeon Chill** and set **Power Efficiency** off (AMD). Driver updates often reset these.
Open **Settings → System → Display → Graphics → Change default graphics settings**. Toggle **Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling** and reboot. Re-measure the same scene. Some Vulkan engines gain FPS with it on, some lose it - keep whichever setting measures better.
In **Settings → System → Display → Graphics**, find the game's .exe and set it to **High performance**. On laptops with hybrid graphics, a driver update can silently reassign the game to the iGPU.
If baseline is still off after the steps above, do a clean install from the vendor installer (NVIDIA app or AMD Software → **Factory Reset** during install). This removes leftover files from the previous branch that an in-place update kept.
That is expected on the first launch while shaders rebuild. Quit, relaunch, and measure the second run from the same scene.
Turn Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling back off in Settings → System → Display → Graphics and reboot. The feature is incompatible with some older Vulkan engines.
Reinstall the NVIDIA app from https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/software/nvidia-app/, which bundles the control panel components.
The cache-clear step helps both. DX12 uses a separate DXCache folder, which the commands above also clear.
No. The vendor installer's Factory Reset / Clean Install option is enough for most cases. Use DDU only if that still leaves artefacts.
Yes - every game will rebuild its shaders on first launch after the clear. Expect one stuttery session per title.
Shader caches rebuild themselves on next launch, so the delete step is self-healing. To revert the Graphics settings, set Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling back to its original state and remove any per-game High performance entry you added. To roll back the driver itself, open Device Manager → Display adapters → your GPU → Properties → Driver → Roll Back Driver.
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