Forza Horizon 6 boots up in just 4 seconds instead of 90 with new Advanced Shader Delivery tech and AMD GPUs — Microsoft claims 95% reduction in gaming load times
Microsoft's Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD) technology has reduced Forza Horizon 6's boot time on PC from 90 seconds to just 4 seconds when using AMD RDNA 3 or newer GPUs. The feature relies on precompiled shaders downloaded from a cloud database, eliminating the need for on-device shader compilation. ASD is currently limited to games from the Xbox PC app or Microsoft Store and requires enrollment in the Xbox Insiders program.
- ▪Advanced Shader Delivery reduced Forza Horizon 6's load time by 95% on a system with an RX 7600 GPU and Ryzen 7 5800 CPU.
- ▪ASD uses a cloud-based Precompiled Shader Database to deliver shaders tailored to a user's GPU, driver, and game configuration.
- ▪The technology is currently available only on AMD RDNA 3, RDNA 3.5, and RDNA 4 GPUs and requires the Xbox PC app and Xbox Insiders enrollment.
- ▪Nvidia and Intel offer similar technologies called Auto Shader Compilation and Precompiled Shader Distribution, respectively.
- ▪ASD was initially developed for Xbox ROG Ally handhelds and is now being expanded to Windows 11 PCs as a universal solution for faster game launches.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
PC Components GPUs GPU Drivers Forza Horizon 6 boots up in just 4 seconds instead of 90 with new Advanced Shader Delivery tech and AMD GPUs — Microsoft claims 95% reduction in gaming load times News By Hassam Nasir published 17 May 2026 Only available with games downloaded via the Xbox PC app. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Microsoft) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Microsoft announced Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD) for Xbox ROG Ally devices last year, bringing precompiled shaders to the handheld to improve load times.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Tom's Hardware.
Discussion
0 commentsMore from Tom's Hardware
