Microsoft’s Advanced Shader Delivery cuts load times by 95% in Forza Horizon 6 but locks feature behind Xbox app ecosystem

Given that modern games pack millions of polygons, materials, textures, and lighting combinations, gamers tend to be annoyed by the fact that one can’t just load into a game these days without seeing the tedious shader compilation screen.

Advanced Shader Delivery: Skipping the compilation queue?

The same is true for Microsoft and Playground Games’ recent early access release of Forza Horizon 6, which, on average, takes 90 seconds to compile shaders. However, Microsoft’s new Advanced Shader Delivery technology allows you to compile all shaders in just 4 seconds, reportedly cutting the initial compilation load time by 95%.

Microsoft tested this on an AMD Radeon RX 7600 GPU and an AMD Ryzen 7 5800 8-core CPU. The company recently announced that it is pushing ASD beyond its ROG Ally handhelds to Windows 11 PCs sporting AMD hardware, whether that’s dedicated Radeon GPUs or integrated Radeon RX graphics.

In a DirectX dev blog, Microsoft stated:

“This expansion includes Forza Horizon 6, which showcases the advantage of ASD by dramatically improving load times by 95%. We partnered closely with the team behind Forza Horizon 6 to give more players the advantage of ASD on day one. Forza Horizon 6 loads in 4 seconds, compared to almost 1.5 minutes. ASD also reduces shader stutter when playing the title by circumventing just-in-time compilation of shaders during gameplay.”

Microsoft’s Advanced Shader Delivery handles shader compilation in the cloud ahead of time. When you download Forza Horizon 6 through the Xbox PC app or Microsoft Store, the system automatically grabs a precompiled set of shaders tailored to your exact PC specifications and driver setup and downloads them along with the game.

No Nvidia GPU support yet

The caveat is that this currently doesn’t work on Nvidia GPUs, and you need to download the game via the Xbox or Microsoft Store app. This means that most gamers who have probably pre-ordered or downloaded the game on platforms like Steam, even if they have AMD hardware, won’t get access to ASD just yet.

Furthermore, Advanced Shader Delivery is still in public preview, meaning you need to be enrolled in the Xbox Insider Program. Requirements include Windows 11 version 24H2 or later, the newest AMD Adrenalin drivers, and an RDNA 3, 3.5, or RDNA 4 GPU, covering Radeon RX 7000, mobile 8000, and RX 9000 series GPUs.