Microsoft cuts shader compilation wait in Gears of War: E-Day to seconds

⚡ The gist in 5 seconds - Microsoft says Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD) cuts the first shader compilation in Gears of War: E-Day down to a few seconds on Windows 11, reducing the time by roughly 95% compared to a typical PC. - ASD has been running on AMD and Qualcomm since October 1; Intel and NVIDIA support will arrive later this month. - Requirements: Windows 11 24H2 or newer, the Xbox PC app, and up-to-date drivers. ### 🔍 What was found In the DirectX Developer Blog, Microsoft announced that Advanced Shader Delivery has been enabled for AMD and Qualcomm since early access opened on October 1. The company claims that the first shader compilation with ASD takes "just a few seconds" instead of several minutes on a regular PC — a reduction of about 95%. When the technology is active, a "Precompiled shaders installed" message appears in the launch window. This means precompiled shaders ship with the game download, and the player's CPU is less burdened at startup. Currently, ASD supports AMD RDNA 1, RDNA 2, RDNA 3, RDNA 3.5, and RDNA 4 with Adrenalin driver 26.6.1 or newer, as well as Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 with driver 2026.08.3 or newer. Intel Arc B570, Arc B580, Core Ultra Series 2 and Core Ultra Series 3, all NVIDIA RTX GPUs, and RTX Spark will join later in October; driver versions for them have not yet been listed. Gears of War: E-Day is the first game with ASD support across a wide range of Windows devices. In a hands-on test on the ROG Ally X, journalist Darryn Bonthuys recorded a wait of about 20 seconds, whereas other new games forced waits of up to 15 minutes. ### 💡 Why it matters ASD addresses two well-known PC gaming problems: long waits at first launch and stuttering caused by shader compilation mid-game. If Microsoft's claims hold up, game startup on Windows 11 will become noticeably faster, and the CPU will be freed from heavy work during loading. It is a practical step toward making precompiled shaders a standard for new releases. ### 🧩 Context Advanced Shader Delivery is not a new program: in May, Microsoft expanded the public preview to AMD RDNA, and now other GPU vendors are being brought on board. The Coalition's game entered early access on October 1 for Premium Edition buyers, with the full release on PC and Xbox Series X|S on October 6. Microsoft is inviting studios to integrate ASD into their projects and has published documentation on GitHub; AMD GPUOpen also released an Advanced Shader Delivery State Object Compiler page on October 1, explaining to developers how to build a State Object Database and generate a Precompiled Shader Database. Support for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 and other games is expected in the future, but no timelines have been given.

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