Nvidia Driver 621.01 Adds Advanced Shader Delivery for RTX GPUs

Nvidia's new GeForce Game Ready driver, version 621.01, adds support for Advanced Shader Delivery, a Microsoft feature that is meant to remove the long "compiling shaders" screen many PC games show after an install or an update. Nvidia says the feature works on all GeForce RTX cards, from the RTX 20 series to the RTX 50 series, but only in games that have been prepared for it. For now, Nvidia names two: Gears of War: E-Day and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4.

What Advanced Shader Delivery does

A shader is a small program that tells the graphics card how to draw part of a scene, such as light on metal or the movement of smoke. Modern games ship with tens of thousands of them. They are written in a general form, so before they run, they must be compiled into instructions that fit your exact GPU and your exact driver version. That work is heavy on the processor. Nvidia says it can make players wait up to 30 minutes each time a game launches for the first time or gets updated.

Advanced Shader Delivery moves that work to the cloud. According to Nvidia, developers capture their shaders in a database, and Microsoft's servers precompile them for a very large number of hardware and driver combinations. When you download or update a supported game, the version that matches your PC is bundled with the download through the Xbox PC app. The game then starts with its shaders already built.

Nvidia also claims a near-100% cache hit rate, which it says removes the compile-on-the-fly hitches some games suffer from mid-game, such as processor spikes and frame stutters. That is Nvidia's own description. We have not seen independent testing of it yet.

What is confirmed and what is not

The driver details come straight from Nvidia, and Guru3D lists 621.01 as a WHQL-certified release for Windows 10 and Windows 11. The Advanced Shader Delivery part, however, depends on Windows 11, DirectX 12 and the Xbox PC app, as Nvidia describes it.

On speed, HWCooling.net reports that Microsoft says the first launch of Gears of War: E-Day after installation, or after a driver or game update, is shortened by up to 95%, to a few seconds. That figure comes from Microsoft through HWCooling, not from Nvidia, and "up to" means typical results will vary. The same report says the game shows a "Precompiled shaders installed" message at launch when the feature is active.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 officially launches today, October 23, after its campaign went into early access on October 16. Nvidia says the new driver brings Advanced Shader Delivery support to that game as well.

Does it work for Steam games?

This is unclear, and we are not going to promise anything. Nvidia's wording ties the feature to games bought through the Microsoft Store and delivered by the Xbox PC app. PC Gamer repeats that point: the benefit applies to supported games you download through the Xbox app. HWCooling.net adds that Microsoft has said the feature should eventually help games from other stores, but notes that Microsoft is not talking about it now, so it is probably not ready. If you buy your games elsewhere, assume you will not see a change until a store or publisher says otherwise.

Other GPU makers

Nvidia is not the first. HWCooling.net reports that AMD has supported the feature since Adrenalin 26.6.1, covering Radeon cards from the RX 5000 series up, and that Qualcomm added it for Adreno X2 graphics in a driver released on September 22. Microsoft has said Intel support for Arc B-Series cards is due this month. Whether that has shipped is something we have not confirmed.

A note on memory use

PC Gamer mentions that one journalist, Sebastian Castellanos, wrote on X that system RAM use in Gears of War: E-Day dropped noticeably with the new driver, by about 7 to 8 GB on his machine, though processor use stayed fairly high. PC Gamer had not tested the driver itself when it published. Treat this as one person's report, not a measured result.

What to do

If you own an RTX card and plan to play either game, install driver 621.01 from the NVIDIA app or Nvidia's website, and get the game through the Xbox PC app if you want the precompiled shaders. After that, watch the first launch: if the long compile screen is gone, the feature is working. It also may not help much in games that do not support it. For those, shader compilation stutter is still a normal part of PC gaming, and our sister site how2game has a guide that explains why it happens and what you can do about it.

Nvidia says the same driver adds support for Phantom Blade Zero, which launches on October 28, and for DLSS 4.5 updates in other games, but this article only covers the shader feature.