(In reply to bellamorte42 from comment #11)
> Update
> Huge improvement with the shader cache (Great job Marek), but the issue is
> still present and detrimental.  The first 10 seconds of the game is
> unplayable, and <1 second freezes (usually when in combat) still persist for
> the first couple of minutes after.

Yes, that's expected. The issue can only be fixed with an on-disk shader cache.
It won't help with the first run (that's unfixable), but it should help with
all subsequent runs.

I guess Unreal Engine was designed with the assumption that the first run will
always be unpleasant and all the rest should be fine as long as the driver
isn't updated.