AMD Radeon RX 7600 Cuts Forza Horizon 6 Load Time From 90 Seconds to 4 as Microsoft Expands Advanced Shader Delivery
Microsoft has officially expanded the public preview of Advanced Shader Delivery to more AMD Radeon hardware, bringing one of the most practical PC gaming improvements of the year to a much wider audience. In its latest DirectX developer update, Microsoft says the feature now moves beyond the ROG Xbox Ally handhelds and supports Windows 11 PCs with AMD discrete GPUs and gaming laptop integrated GPUs, with the goal of reducing first launch waiting times and eliminating shader related stutter by delivering precompiled shaders at download time.
For Forza Horizon 6, the result is dramatic. Microsoft says the game loads in 4 seconds instead of nearly 1.5 minutes, which it describes as a 95% reduction in load time. The company says this specific result was measured on a system using an AMD Radeon RX 7600 and an AMD Ryzen 7 5800 8 Core processor, and adds that the technology also reduces shader stutter during gameplay by avoiding just in time shader compilation. That makes this more than a loading screen win. It is also a meaningful gameplay smoothness upgrade.
Microsoft Advanced Shader Delivery now supports more AMD GPUs!
— AMD GPUOpen (@GPUOpen) May 15, 2026
Enabled with AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 26.5.2:
🎮 AMD RDNA 3, 3.5, & 4 GPUs.
⚡ Reduce shader stutter & load times by up to 95%.
Learn how to add ASD to your game via AgilitySDK 👇https://t.co/D3TKMcMgTW
The timing is also important because Microsoft is using Forza Horizon 6 as the showcase title for the broader rollout. In the same post, the company says it partnered closely with the Forza Horizon 6 team so more players could access Advanced Shader Delivery on day 1. On the AMD side, the newly released Adrenalin 26.5.2 driver adds game support for Forza Horizon 6 and 007 First Light, giving Radeon users a clear software path to enable the feature.
For players who want to use it right now, Microsoft has laid out a specific requirements stack. The company says you need Windows 11 24H2 or higher, Xbox Gaming Services 37.113.11003.0 or higher, the Xbox Insider Hub with the PC Gaming Preview enabled, an AMD RDNA 3, RDNA 3.5, or RDNA 4 GPU, and Adrenalin 26.5.2 or newer. Microsoft also notes that when the feature is active, the game launch window will show “Precompiled shaders installed.”
That hardware scope matters. Microsoft’s current public preview covers newer Radeon families, which in practical terms means RX 7000, Radeon 700M, RX 8000, Radeon 800M, and RX 9000 class hardware that falls under those RDNA generations, while AMD’s new driver package also confirms support across its current Radeon desktop and mobile stacks. This gives AMD a strong real world feature story at a time when smoother PC game deployment matters almost as much as raw frame rate.
The bigger takeaway is that this is the kind of improvement players feel immediately. Higher frame rates look great in benchmarks, but shaving a first launch from 90 seconds to 4 and removing shader hitching tackles a much more visible friction point in modern PC gaming. Microsoft says more Windows devices and other hardware partners will be enabled in the coming months, so Advanced Shader Delivery may end up becoming one of the more important quietly transformative platform upgrades in the DirectX ecosystem if adoption keeps growing.
Do you think shader delivery tools like this will become a standard expectation for PC games, or will adoption still move too slowly across storefronts and developers?
