Microsoft's Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS), introduced in a May 2020 Windows 10 update, shifts scheduling of graphics tasks from the CPU to dedicated hardware on the GPU. Nvidia added support that June starting with GTX 10-series cards, AMD didn't support it until December 2023 on its RX 7900, 7800 and 7700 series, and Intel limits support to its Arc B-series. Benchmarks from Tom's Hardware and Gamers Nexus found the feature produced negligible or even slightly negative performance changes, including a repeatable 2.4 percent drop in one game on a budget Intel CPU.
engadget.com
· 2026-11-01
Microsoft has detailed two new DirectX Raytracing features, Clustered Geometry and Partitioned TLAS, now in preview, designed to avoid rebuilding ray tracing acceleration structures from scratch every frame. In Microsoft's own test on a Radeon RX 9070, switching to clustered geometry raised frame rate from 1.2 to 79 fps and cut memory used for those structures by about 90%, from roughly 7.5GB to 774MB.
techspot.com
· 2026-10-31
Nvidia released GPU driver 621.01, enabling Microsoft's Advanced Shader Delivery, a DirectX 12/Windows 11 technology that precompiles shaders in the cloud instead of on a player's PC. Gears of War: E-Day and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 support the feature when downloaded through the Xbox PC app, even if purchased on Steam, and it's also supported on AMD and Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 drivers.
theverge.com
· 2026-10-21
Tom's Hardware installed Windows 7 on current gaming hardware and tested it against Windows 11 across eight DirectX 11 titles and two DirectX 9 titles. The outlet found Windows 7 posted notable performance advantages over Windows 11 in several of these games despite being 17 years old.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-10-10
The Coalition's Gears of War: E-Day, built on Unreal Engine 5 and DirectX 12, was benchmarked across 44 graphics cards using its in-game performance tool. Tests were conducted at Medium and Ultra settings, with additional upscaling configurations applied at higher resolutions, all on a Ryzen 7 9800X3D system. Results aim to guide players on suitable GPU upgrades for the game.
techspot.com
· 2026-10-06
A solo developer released SCSKiller, an open-source tool that pre-compiles game shaders on a user's PC and stores them in the GPU driver cache to reduce shader-compilation stutter. It supports DirectX 11 and 12 titles on AMD and Nvidia GPUs, and can detect games from Steam, GOG, Epic, Ubisoft Connect and Battle.net, though some games require a brief recording session to identify shaders.
techspot.com
· 2026-10-05
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