AMD expands Advanced Shader Delivery across the entire RDNA lineup and cuts loading times by 95%
AMD has just announced one of the most impactful updates for PC gamers in years: Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD) technology is coming to every generation of RDNA-architecture GPUs, from the first to the fourth generation. The practical result? Loading times up to 95% shorter and the end of shader-related stutters. No exaggeration.
What changes in practice
To grasp the weight of this news, just look at Forza Horizon 6. With ASD technology enabled on a setup featuring an AMD Radeon RX 7600 and an AMD Ryzen 7 5800, the game began launching in just 4 seconds. Previously, the same system took around a minute and a half to load. This isn’t a marginal tweak – it’s a leap into a different category.
Beyond faster loading, the solution directly tackles the problem of shader stutters, those visual hiccups that appear when a game compiles shaders in real time during gameplay. With ASD, that compilation is done ahead of time and efficiently, delivering a far smoother experience from the very first minutes.
Which cards and games are supported
Support covers the entire RDNA family: RDNA 1, RDNA 2, RDNA 3, RDNA 3.5 and RDNA 4. To take advantage right now, the system needs to meet a few minimum requirements – Windows 11 24H2 or later, Xbox Game Services version 37.113.11003.0 or newer, and Adrenalin 26.6.1 drivers or later. Without these updated components, the feature won’t work.
The list of compatible titles at launch is already extensive. Among the confirmed ones are Ark: Survival Ascended, Avowed, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Control, Dead Island 2, Final Fantasy XVI, Forspoken, Forza Horizon 5, Forza Horizon 6, Forza Motorsport, Gears of War: Reloaded, Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced, Hogwarts Legacy, Lies of P, Metro Exodus, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, Monster Hunter Rise, Persona 3 Reload, Resident Evil 2 (2019), Resident Evil 3, Starfield, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, Sea of Thieves, Silent Hill f, South of Midnight, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion Remaster, The Outer Worlds 2, Ninja Gaiden 4, The Callisto Protocol and many others.
Microsoft and AMD together – and the future goes beyond AMD
Behind this expansion is a direct partnership between AMD and Microsoft. The feature works through the Xbox app on PC, and Microsoft itself confirmed in an official statement that it “partnered with AMD to invest in and improve the PC gaming experience.” The collaboration goes beyond a simple driver: it involves an infrastructure for delivering pre-compiled shaders integrated into the Xbox ecosystem on Windows.
And the move doesn’t stop there. Microsoft has already made clear that it intends to enable ASD on more Windows devices and on hardware from other independent manufacturers in the coming months. That means cards from other brands may eventually benefit from the technology too. For developers, a new toolkit has already been made available to ease integration into games. The revolution in loading times has begun – and it’s far from over.
