Microsoft’s new Advanced Shader Delivery feature is meant to tackle one of PC gaming’s most annoying problems: shader compilation stutter. In testing on AMD’s Radeon RX 9070 XT, it delivered major improvements in some games, cutting initial load times by as much as 95% while also smoothing out 1% low performance in certain scenes. The big idea is simple: move shader work out of the player’s first launch and into the download process.
What Advanced Shader Delivery does
Shader compilation has long been a pain point in PC games, especially in large modern releases with huge numbers of pipeline state objects. Even after a game spends time precompiling shaders, some of that work can still happen during gameplay, causing stutter at the worst possible moment.
Advanced Shader Delivery is designed to reduce that by shipping precompiled shaders alongside the game itself. Microsoft’s approach uses developer-collected shader data, processes it offline, and distributes it as part of the game download so the system can rely less on on-the-fly compilation.
Why players should care
For players, the practical upside is less waiting and fewer hitching problems when starting a game for the first time, returning after an update, or installing a new driver. That matters most in games that are especially heavy on shader compilation, where the difference between a smooth intro and a stuttering mess can be immediate.
Tom’s Hardware’s testing showed that the feature can make a very visible difference, though the impact varies from game to game.
How the tests went
The feature was tested across six games on an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT system. The testing compared performance with Advanced Shader Delivery enabled and disabled, using fresh driver installs and a setup built around high-end desktop hardware.
- Forza Horizon 6 saw initial load time drop from 48 seconds to 2 seconds.
- That worked out to a 96% improvement in load time.
- Some scenes also showed smoother gameplay and better 1% low performance.
- In the tested prologue section, shader compilation stutter was noticeably reduced when the feature was active.
The report also notes that the feature is meant to help after game updates and driver updates, not just on the very first launch.
What remains unclear
The announcement and testing do not make every detail fully clear yet. The feature is only described here as being supported on AMD GPUs for now, while NVIDIA support is said to be coming later. It also appears tied to games distributed through the Xbox store, which may limit how widely players can use it at this stage.
That means the main takeaway is promising but still limited: Advanced Shader Delivery looks like a real step toward reducing shader stutter, but its reach depends on platform support and how broadly developers adopt it.
Source
Source: Tom’s Hardware