Microsoft promised to greatly reduce the amount of time we spend waiting for shaders to compile in modern games via Advanced Shader Delivery, and the company’s feature is seemingly fulfilling that promise. While the tech doesn’t always have a profound effect in games, it’s difficult to go back to the way things were in titles that benefit from it.
For those out of the loop, Advanced Shader Delivery began life on the ROG Xbox Ally X and ROG Xbox Ally before becoming available to other Windows devices as part of a public preview earlier this year. The technology aims to replace often lengthy shader pre-compilation by bundling precompiled shaders alongside game files themselves.
In theory, this should massively speed up the time it takes for you to start a game following initial installation, patches, and driver updates. For the moment, Advanced Shader Delivery is only available to AMD GPUs, specifically those with RDNA 3 GPUs or newer, and only works via the Xbox Store. However, wider storefront compatibility and alternative takes of the technology from both Intel and Nvidia should follow suit in the near future.
The fine folks at Tom’s Hardware tested Advanced Shader Delivery in six games, using a Radeon RX 9070 XT, and the results were frequently transformative. Forza Horizon 6 enjoyed the largest 96% improvement, with shader compilation load times falling from 48 seconds to a mere two seconds thanks to Advanced Shader Delivery, but these weren’t the only impressive reductions.
For instance, The Outer Worlds 2 previously took 2 minutes and 52 seconds to precompile shaders but this falls to a staggeringly short 9 seconds with Advanced Shader Delivery, a 95% uplift. Meanwhile, Avowed and Hogwarts Legacy respectively saw wait times reduce by 78% and 56%.
Unfortunately, Advanced Shader Delivery seemingly can’t fix stutters stemming from on-the-fly shader compilation. While testing Silent Hill f, a game without a pre-compilation step, frame rates remain spotty, although this is not the case in Ninja Gaiden 4 despite the same setup.
Advanced Shader Delivery undoubtedly shows promise, but it’s clear that Microsoft needs to iron out a few kinks before it can become the flawless replacement for shader pre-compilation it should be. Regardless, I look forward to the future in which I can jump into a game on my PC as quickly as I can on my console through this technology.
For more graphics card talk, check out our picks of the best GPUs on the market today.
