PC gamers hate long loading screens and annoying shader stutters. Now, Microsoft and AMD have teamed up to fix both problems. As of June 11, Microsoft’s Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD) is officially available for all AMD RDNA graphics cards through the Xbox PC App. This massive update drastically improves the PC gaming experience. In fact, it slashes game load times by up to 95%.
Advanced Shader Delivery: Shifting Workload to the Cloud
Traditionally, your gaming device handles the heavy lifting of compiling shaders locally. However, Advanced Shader Delivery completely changes the rules. It moves the shader compilation process directly to Microsoft’s cloud servers. Therefore, when you download and install a supported game, you receive pre-compiled shaders instantly.
As a result, gamers see massive performance gains. For example, Microsoft tested Forza Horizon 6 on a PC running an AMD Ryzen 7 5800 CPU and a Radeon RX 7600 GPU. Previously, the game took 1.5 minutes to load on this hardware. After enabling ASD, that load time plummeted to just four seconds. Furthermore, the technology virtually eliminates shader stutter during gameplay. Interestingly, this feature isn’t entirely new. Asus ROG Xbox Ally users have quietly enjoyed ASD on their devices since October 2025.
What You Need to Run It
To take advantage of this speed boost, your rig needs to meet specific requirements. First, your operating system must be Windows 11 24H2 or newer. Additionally, your system requires Xbox Gaming Services version 37.113.11003.0 or higher. You also need the AMD Adrenalin 26.6.1 driver installed. Finally, your graphics card must use RDNA 1, RDNA 2, RDNA 3, RDNA 3.5, or RDNA 4 architecture. Essentially, the Radeon RX 5000 series is the bare minimum requirement.
Meanwhile, developers can already use the latest DirectX Agility SDK to support this feature in their titles. They simply upload the SODB to the Xbox Partner Center to enable pre-compilation. Microsoft plans to expand ASD to more Windows devices and other hardware vendors in the coming months. Specifically, Nvidia announced in March that it will support ASD later in 2026, though they have not provided an exact launch window yet.
Expanding Ecosystem & Supported Titles
Ultimately, this rollout highlights AMD’s growing influence in the gaming industry. Despite Nvidia’s dominance in the PC GPU market, AMD just reported its largest financial quarter in history for Q1 2026. Fueling this 38% year-on-year revenue growth is the surging demand for AI infrastructure. Looking ahead, AMD’s reach will continue to grow, as their processors will power the upcoming PS6 and Xbox Project Helix consoles.
Currently, 36 major PC games support Advanced Shader Delivery. The complete list includes:
- Ark Survival Ascended
- Avowed
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- Control
- Dead Island 2
- Deep Rock Galactic
- Farming Simulator 25
- Final Fantasy XVI
- Forspoken
- Forza Horizon 5
- Forza Horizon 6
- Forza Motorsport
- Gears of War: Reloaded
- Gears Tactics
- Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced
- Grounded 2
- Hogwarts Legacy
- Keeper
- Lies of P
- Metro Exodus
- Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024
- Monster Hunter Rise
- Ninja Gaiden 4
- Persona 3 Reload
- Resident Evil 2 (2019)
- Resident Evil 3
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
- Sea of Thieves
- Silent Hill f
- Sniper Elite: Resistance
- South of Midnight
- Starfield
- The Callisto Protocol
- The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered
- The Outer Worlds 2
