IT Home (IT之家), May 17th - Microsoft last year introduced Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD) for the Xbox ROG Ally handheld console, bringing pre-compiled shader technology to reduce game load times. The technology was later integrated into the DirectX Software Development Kit, with Intel and NVIDIA also launching their own similar technologies. Now, as Microsoft expands Advanced Shader Delivery from handheld platforms to RDNA3, RDNA3.5, and RDNA4 architecture graphics cards, AMD has officially joined the technology camp.

Forza Horizon 6 becomes the first title to support this technology on Win11 PC, but players must download the game from the Microsoft Store or the Xbox PC client to enable this feature. Tests on a device equipped with an RX 7600 graphics card and a Ryzen 7 5800 processor show that with the technology enabled, game first-time launch speed increases by 95%, taking only 4 seconds to load; without it, the initial game load takes nearly a minute and a half.

The reason is that every time a new game is installed or a game update is completed, the game needs to regenerate the shader cache, a process that often takes several minutes. Even without changing the game content, if the graphics driver is updated, all games will need to recompile shaders the first time they are launched. This step cannot be skipped because shader compilation must be done locally on the device and adapted to different hardware configurations.

Microsoft's solution is to completely decouple shaders from the graphics driver and unify them in a cloud-based precompiled shader database (PSDB). When users download games from the Microsoft Store or the Xbox PC client, the advanced shader distribution technology automatically identifies the device's specific configuration, such as game version, graphics card model, and driver version, and downloads the corresponding precompiled shader files in advance. This way, when the game starts, the shaders are already compiled, eliminating the extra wait.

According to IT Home (IT之家), this technology has long been widely adopted in game consoles, as consoles have unified hardware configurations and do not need to adapt to diverse hardware. Valve also developed a precompiled shader solution adapted to the Linux system for the Steam Deck handheld, but it never ported this feature to the Windows platform. Now that SSDs have significantly reduced loading times, waiting for shader compilation has become the last major obstacle to achieving instant game startup.

Currently, the advanced shader distribution technology only supports RDNA3 and newer architecture graphics cards, and is only available for games downloaded through the Xbox PC client or Microsoft Store. It is not yet clear when other Windows gaming platforms will adopt this technology, but the first 34 games officially announced to be compatible with Xbox ROG Ally now also support this feature.

In addition, this feature is currently in preview testing. Players must join the Xbox Insider program and install the Xbox Insider Hub client to enable the advanced shader distribution technology. Microsoft has jointly developed this technology in depth with AMD, so for now it is only available on RDNA3 and above hardware, with plans to turn it into a universal technology compatible with all Win11 graphics devices in the future.

Besides, NVIDIA graphics card users can use the automatic shader compilation function in the NVIDIA driver software to achieve the same acceleration effect, and can also finely customize the shader cache size. Intel graphics card users can enable the pre-compiled shader distribution function in the Intel Graphics Control Center. Intel revealed that it is currently using its own self-developed cloud shader database, and is expected to officially unify with Microsoft's ASD universal standard later this year.

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