Microsoft says Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD) will support “All RTX GPUs and RTX Spark” later this month, in its October 1 DirectX Developer Blog post. The feature ships precompiled shaders with a game download, so the player’s CPU does less compiling at first launch. Until now Microsoft’s supported list covered AMD RDNA graphics and Snapdragon X2, and Intel’s Arc B570 and B580 and Core Ultra Series 2 and 3 join RTX in the same later-this-month group.
In Gears of War: E-Day, first-launch shader compilation goes from minutes to a few seconds
Microsoft reports that first-launch shader compilation in Gears of War: E-Day, which entered early access the same day, “takes just a few seconds, compared to several minutes on a typical PC without ASD”, a reduction of approximately 95%. For stutter the post adds only that ASD “reduces stutter tied to runtime compilation”, with no stutter measurement.
NVIDIA has been working toward this. In Microsoft’s March post from GDC, NVIDIA’s Henry Lin said the company is working on ASD for GeForce RTX “to eliminate the shader-related stutters and load times that have plagued gamers for years”, with a launch “later this year”. October narrows the timing to this month.
Each game has to supply its own shader data before players see any benefit
Precompiled shaders exist only if a developer supplies the data. In the March post, developers record a state object database (SODB) from their game, compile it offline into a precompiled shader database, and upload the SODB to the Xbox Partner Center with the game package. Players install the Xbox PC app before downloading Gears of War: E-Day, and Microsoft names Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 and “additional titles still to come”. Neither post mentions games already installed gaining precompiled shaders.
Some titles have so many pipeline state objects that “most engines cannot enumerate them”, which is why Microsoft is building partial graphics programs, listed in March as coming soon.
AMD and Qualcomm have minimum drivers listed, NVIDIA and Intel only the month, and all need Windows 11 24H2
For AMD and Qualcomm Microsoft lists minimum drivers, Adrenalin 26.6.1 and 2026.08.3. For NVIDIA and Intel it lists none, only the month and a request to keep graphics drivers up to date. All vendors need Windows 11 24H2 or newer. A “Precompiled shaders installed” note appears in the game’s launch window when ASD is working, which is the one check the post gives.
Our view: RTX support likely opens the pipeline to GeForce cards, but each game still has to join it, so the benefit in practice will follow the list of supported titles more than the GPU.