Nvidia’s latest GPU driver brings a new way to speed up PC games — SkimNews
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- Nvidia rolled out GPU driver 621.01 enabling Microsoft's Advanced Shader Delivery, which speeds up game launches and removes mid-game shader-compilation stutters.
- Advanced Shader Delivery captures shaders into a State Object Database (SODB) via DirectX 12, Windows 11, and the Microsoft Agility SDK, letting Microsoft's cloud network precompile shaders for hundreds of thousands of hardware/driver combinations.
- Gears of War: E-Day and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 both support Advanced Shader Delivery, but only when games are downloaded via the Xbox PC app.
- The technology achieves a near-100 percent cache hit rate, wiping out CPU spikes and frame stutters in supported titles, according to Nvidia's Andrew Burnes.
- The system is storefront-agnostic — players who buy games on Steam still benefit, provided the Xbox PC app is installed on their PC.
- Support extends beyond Nvidia: AMD GPUs running Adrenalin 26.6.1 or higher and Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 series on driver version 2026.08.3 or higher also support Advanced Shader Delivery.
Why it matters: Microsoft's cloud-based shader precompilation now works across Nvidia, AMD, and Qualcomm GPUs, with two flagship Xbox PC titles — Gears of War: E-Day and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 — launching with it enabled, meaning PC players on any storefront must have the Xbox PC app installed to benefit.
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