Gears of War: E-Day cuts PC shader compilation down to seconds

Early access for Gears of War: E-Day is now live for everyone who bought the Premium Edition. PC players get some good news with it: the game supports Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD), a feature that dramatically shortens the wait for shader compilation. That “Compiling Shaders” bar that shows up when you launch a freshly installed game is one of the most hated annoyances of modern PC gaming. According to GameSpot, here you'll barely have time to grab a glass of water.

Why does it matter? Modern games rely on shaders to calculate how light, shadows, reflections and textures look on screen. Normally your machine prepares those files the first time you launch the game, and that can take quite a while. ASD flips that approach: the shaders arrive on your device already prepared. If the idea works and catches on, your first session with a new PC release could stop being a test of patience.

What you need to know

• Gears of War: E-Day early access is open to Premium Edition owners.
• On PC, the game supports Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD).
• ASD precompiles shaders and sends them to your device ahead of time, so you don't have to compile them from scratch.
• According to GameSpot, the feature supports a wide range of systems.
• On an Asus Xbox ROG Ally X, the wait was about 20 seconds, compared with the up to 15 minutes the same outlet has sat through in other games.

What changes with Advanced Shader Delivery

GameSpot explains it with a very vivid comparison: ASD is like buying a Gundam model kit that comes pre-assembled from the factory. Without ASD, your PC gets the loose parts and has to put them together before it lets you play. With ASD, the heavy lifting is done before the content ever reaches your machine. All you do is wait a few seconds.

The test the outlet mentions comes with caveats. The author hadn't yet installed the game on their main PC, and the roughly 20-second figure comes from the ROG Ally X, a handheld. Even so, it's a meaningful data point. Handhelds are usually exactly where these waits hurt the most, both in performance and battery life. Compilation finishing that quickly on that kind of device is a promising sign.

That comparison is worth reading carefully. It isn't a lab test running the same game under the same conditions. It's one person's experience comparing this release with others. Still, the gap is so large that the excitement is easy to understand.

Our take

At Underworld Lordz we're clear on this: this is exactly the kind of improvement PC gaming needed. For competitive players, shader compilation isn't just an annoying wait. When a game launches, you want to jump in right away and try out maps, weapons and settings. Every minute spent staring at a loading bar is time you're not spending on practice. And if shaders compile badly or only partially, you can get stutters mid-match, which is the last thing you need in a close fight. A solution that delivers that work already done is a step in the right direction.

For content creators, the benefit is even more obvious. Few things kill the momentum of a launch-day stream like booting up the game and spending several minutes filling time while your PC compiles. If ASD delivers on its promise, the “first look” truly starts the moment you hit play. That shows in audience retention.

That said, we're not going to oversell it. For now we're talking about a single case, measured on a handheld during a paid early access. On top of that, early access once again splits the community between those who pay for the pricey edition and those who wait. We want to see how ASD holds up on desktop PCs with very different configurations, and after patches and driver updates. Above all, we want more studios to adopt it. A good idea in a single game is an anecdote; across the whole industry, it would be a new standard.

What do you think?

Shader compilation has been the toll you pay for PC gaming for years, and Gears of War: E-Day promises to cut it down to almost nothing. Do you think ASD should be mandatory for every PC release, or are you more worried about other performance issues? Drop by the team chat or our Discord and tell us: what's the worst shader wait you've ever sat through?