Microsoft Advanced Shader Delivery Moves to General Availability for Windows 11 AMD Users to Dramatically Improve PC Game Load Times and Eliminate Initial Frame Rate Stuttering Performance Benchmarks and Hardware Requirements Explained
Microsoft has released Advanced Shader Delivery from a limited preview on handheld consoles to general availability in its Xbox PC app. Microsoft and AMD announced in a joint statement that the technology is now available to Windows 11 users with eligible AMD processors. The software is designed to help improve slow initial load times and the initial frame rate stutter that accompanies them by precompiling game shaders upon download rather than at game launch.
Advanced Shader Deliveryworks by installing precompiled shaders onto your hard drive when you download a game. Instead of the game bottlenecking due tojustin timecompilation during loading, visual stutter is avoided because new game assets are already fully computed. Through collaborative engineering with AMD, the technology has been scaled to work across multiple generations of graphics hardware. Gamers can get access by being part of the Xbox Insiders preview system in their desktop application.
Forza Horizon 6 recently launched with an implementation of Advanced Shader Delivery that, according to Microsoft and AMD, cuts boot times dramatically. Tests using an AMD Radeon RX 7600 and an AMD Ryzen 7 5800 8 core processor had the game launch in 4 seconds an improvement of nearly 1.5 minutes over 95% compared to the same launch without the feature; for more recent hardware such as an AMD Radeon RX 9060 graphics processor, similar loading speed improvements of up to 95% were observed.
Forza Horizon 6 is a great example of how the software eliminates the initial compilation stutter that plague new PC game launches. Since shaders have already been installed prior to the gamer booting up the game, the graphics card doesn't have to build the shader state objects on the fly, which guarantees a stable frame rate for the opening few hours of the game and for day one.
For a user to get the Advanced Shader Delivery feature to work on launch, the operating system needs to be Windows 11 version 24H2 or greater, and Xbox Gaming Services has to be on version 37.113.11003.0 or later. There is a status notification on the game launch window indicating that the precompiled shaders are installed when the feature works.
The latest update to Microsoft Advanced Shader Delivery now supports even more AMD Gaming Devices.
— AMD Radeon (@AMDRadeon) June 12, 2026
⚡️Now enabled on AMD RDNA™ Powered Graphics with AMD Software 26.6.1
⚡️Reduce shader stutter & load times by up to 95%
Learn more: https://t.co/bUchIFRzYY https://t.co/BhztwSCZLG
Hardware support for this technology at launch includes all RDNA 1, RDNA 2, RDNA 3, RDNA 3.5, and RDNA 4 graphics hardware from AMD (including both desktop cards and mobile integrated GPUs). AMD Software Adrenalin driver version 26.6.1 or greater is needed for the feature to be installed. Microsoft claims that it intends to support more hardware vendors and additional Windows devices in the near future.
This optimization is also available to other game developers. Microsoft details how to support the feature in your own games using the latest Agility SDK and explains how game creators can package their games with a state object database to allow automatic support if the assets are uploaded to the Xbox Partner Center.
