Nvidia released its GeForce Game Ready 621.01 driver on Oct. 21, 2026, adding support for Microsoft's Advanced Shader Delivery. The Verge reports that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 and Gears of War: E-Day are among the games supporting the technology. The new driver is one part of the setup, not a switch that removes shader waits from every game.
Advanced Shader Delivery lets supported games download shaders precompiled for a player's graphics hardware and driver, rather than doing all that work on the PC. Digital Foundry explains that this is meant to shorten initial compilation and avoid some hitches when a game would otherwise compile a shader during play. Developers have to support the technology in their games.
What players need
Digital Foundry says Nvidia users need Windows 11 24H2 or later and driver 621.01. VideoCardz reports that the Xbox PC app is also required. VideoCardz places Nvidia's hardware support across GeForce RTX 20 through 50 series GPUs and RTX Spark devices, but says installing the driver alone will not deliver the benefit without a supported game.
There is a storefront wrinkle. The Verge quotes Nvidia's Andrew Burnes saying Steam purchases can benefit if the Xbox PC app is installed. VideoCardz says the precise availability through other storefronts remains unclear, while Neowin reports that broader Steam and Epic Games Store support is planned for later. That is not a promise that every Steam game can download these shaders now.
Nor is it a cure for every hitch: Digital Foundry says the technology does not prevent traversal stutter, which occurs as game data loads while a player moves through the world. Separately, VideoCardz lists fixes in driver 621.01 for crashes in Wuthering Waves when Freestyle filters and DLSS Frame Generation are enabled, and in Star Citizen when using Vulkan.
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