Gears of War: E-Day early access starts with fix for PC loading waits

Premium Edition buyers are first through the door. Early access for Gears of War: E-Day has started, and the PC version arrives with a new Microsoft system designed to cut one of PC gaming's longest waits.

The system is Advanced Shader Delivery, or ASD. Shaders are small instructions that tell a graphics card how to draw light, shadow and texture on screen. ASD pre-translates those files and delivers them to devices ahead of time, so players spend less time waiting for a process called shader compilation, where a PC prepares those instructions for its specific hardware.

That wait is the target. On PC, a first launch can mean a long loading bar followed by stutter, brief hitches when new effects appear before the shaders are ready. Microsoft says ASD addresses both problems by preloading game shaders during download, so supported games launch faster and run smoother from the first play DirectX Blog.

The numbers are large. Microsoft says ASD enables select games to launch up to 10x faster, and developer guidance puts the cut to launch times at up to 95%. The company also says the system can help improve battery life on portable devices, since the device does less heavy preparation work at start-up.

E-Day is the flagship for the technology. It is the first game to support ASD across Windows devices, according to early access reporting GameSpot. Support is rolling out in stages. ASD is currently available for players with AMD graphics cards, while owners of Nvidia graphics cards will receive ASD-compatible drivers shortly after E-Day launches.

The PC build was put together with Nvidia. Developer The Coalition worked with the chipmaker on the Windows version Xbox Wire, which also supports three upscaling options on compatible hardware: AMD FSR, Unreal Engine TSR and Intel XeSS. Those are reconstruction tools that lift frame rates by rendering at a lower resolution, then rebuilding a sharper image. Players will need 130GB of SSD storage space, according to technical analysis of the PC version Digital Foundry.

What makes this stand out is how ordinary the benefit feels. No new menu to learn. No setting to tune. For players, this means less hanging around before the shooting starts, and fewer of those early stutters that make a new install feel rough.