Nvidia and Microsoft want to kill PC gaming’s shader-stutter nightmare

PC gaming’s shader-stutter nightmare might finally be heading to the grave. Nvidia’s new GeForce 621. 01 driver adds support for Microsoft’s Advanced Shader Delivery technology, starting with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 and Gears of War: E-Day. That might just sound like a bullet point buried in another Game Ready driver release—and it was, funnily enough—but it could wind up mattering a whole lot more than the usual day-one optimizations and DLSS updates. Nvidia says Advanced Shader Delivery can let supported games skip local shader compilation entirely, while Microsoft says the technology can also reduce the dreaded shader-compilation stutters that have plagued major PC releases for years. And man, have they plagued them. Back in 2023, we lamented the miserable state of PC ports after Forspoken, Dead Space, The Last of Us Part I, and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor all arrived with various performance headaches. Shader compilation and traversal