Advanced Shader Delivery banishes long loads and shader stutter on first time launch, but only for certain games and there are a number of other caveats too
Overview & Key Takeaways
I don't have this problem on PS5, I'm just saying.
I've got good news for many folks gaming on a Team Red rig: Microsoft's Advanced Shader Delivery is now supported by AMD RDNA 3, 3.5, and 4 GPUs. In other words, graphics cards from the Radeon RX 7000, 8000, and 9000 series now support this tech, via the latest Adrenalin drivers.
Advanced Shader Delivery was first announced back in 2025, exclusively for the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X handhelds. To put it very simply, rather than your game of choice taking its time to compile and cache shaders the first time you launch it, this tech does all of that before you ever hit 'play'—but only so long as you're downloading games via the Xbox app.
Microsoft previously explained it had "partnered with teams across Xbox and at AMD to precompile [shader] data and distribute it at download." If you fancy a more technical deep dive than this, the Unreal Engine tech blog has the goods. Now, PC gamers running Windows on AMD hardware, who are also Xbox Insiders, can enjoy the same freedom from long load times and stuttering on a selection of 'key titles' that support the tech.
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A number of recent releases benefit from this rollout to laptops and desktops with discrete AMD GPUs. According to the DirectX Developer Blog, a close partnership with the Forza Horizon 6 development team means that the game "showcases the advantage of ASD by dramatically improving loading times by 95%" from day one. The team claims that, on a machine with an AMD Radeon RX 7600 GPU and an AMD Ryzen 7 5800 CPU, ASD reduces the game's first-time load from 1.5 minutes to 4 seconds.
This latest rollout is part of a 'public preview' for Xbox Insiders, and not every game supports the tech. A full list of titles available via Xbox Wire here; besides Forza 6, supported title highlights include Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Silent Hill f, and Ninja Gaiden 4. In-game, you'll see a tiny ‘Precompiled shaders installed’ message in the launch window of supported titles—but, much like the faster load times, it's very much 'blink and you'll miss it'.
(Image credit: Konami)
The DirectX Dev blog post concludes with a 'call to action,' pointing game devs towards another post that "details how you can leverage the latest AgilitySDK to take advantage of the benefits of ASD." There are also plans to bring ASD to more devices, including an independent hardware vendor kit. Whether that means there are plans to bring ASD to GPUs besides anything on Team Red remains to be seen, though.
There's also currently no word on whether we'll see the streamlining shader tech come to Steam, Epic, or GOG. Presumably, any fresh implementation of the tech would still need to be tied to Microsoft's ecosystem, at least for the time being. Otherwise, freedom from long, first-time loads and shader stutter is why I'm happy to be a console gaming double agent.
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