Nvidia driver 621.01 adds Microsoft’s Advanced Shader Delivery

Nvidia is rolling out GPU driver 621.01, which enables Microsoft’s Advanced Shader Delivery technology. The feature aims to speed up game launches and reduce stuttering and CPU spikes by avoiding “just-in-time” shader compilation during gameplay.

Advanced Shader Delivery offloads shader compilation for different hardware combinations to the cloud. Using DirectX 12, Windows 11, and the Microsoft Agility SDK, developers capture shaders in a State Object Database (SODB). Microsoft’s cloud network can then precompile them for hundreds of thousands of hardware and driver combinations, Nvidia’s Andrew Burnes explains.

Gears of War: E-Day and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 support the feature when downloaded through the Xbox PC app. Burnes says it is storefront-agnostic, so it can also benefit players who bought games on Steam, provided the Xbox PC app is installed.

Nvidia says the feature has a near-100 percent cache hit rate and removes mid-game shader compilation in supported titles. It is also supported on AMD GPUs with Adrenalin 26.6.1 or higher, and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 series with driver version 2026.08.3 or higher.