- Intel released a new Arc graphics driver
- It introduces a precompiled shaders feature to help supported games load faster.
- This is a situational advantage, but it will apply more often than you think
Intel has introduced a new trick for some of its Arc GPUs that allows supported games to load much faster (although only in certain situations, and I’ll get to that).
Wccftech reports (via Tech PowerUp) that the Intel Precompiled Shaders feature is available with the latest Arc driver and can be used by Intel Battlemage desktop GPUs, as well as Xe2 and Xe3 integrated graphics (in Core Ultra Series 3 and 200V chips for thin and light laptops or handhelds).
Here’s how it works: Normally when you first load a game, compiling shaders can take a long time and really slow things down. So, Intel precompiles these shaders and stores them in the cloud. Then, when its graphics app looks at your installed games and sees one it has shaders for, they’re automatically downloaded and put in place.
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In fact, all this compilation work is done in advance, so when you launch the game it loads much faster. We’re talking about loading times that are usually two or three times faster, but some games can receive considerable improvements, like God of War Ragnarok, which is 21x faster on an Arc B580 (or 37x faster with B390 integrated graphics on the new Panther Lake flagship).
As mentioned before, the game must be supported by Intel to allow precompiled shaders, and only 13 titles are currently available, but more will arrive in the future. Also note that games must be installed on Steam and the current list of supported titles is as follows:
- Dark myth: Wukong
- Borderlands 4
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
- Cyberpunk 2077
- God of War Ragnarok
- Gotham Knights
- Hogwarts Legacy
- NBA 2K26
- Star Field
- STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
- The Outer Worlds 2
Note that this is Intel’s implementation of a broader technology coming from Microsoft known as Advanced Shader Delivery, which has been promised to Windows 11 gamers for later in 2026.
Intel clarified the situation for Tech PowerUp: “Intel Precompiled Shaders are custom built and managed by Intel. We are also working with Microsoft on launching Advanced Shader Delivery later this year. Together, the two services will provide users of supported Arc GPUs with greater coverage of games and game stores with technologies that reduce latency and in-game stuttering due to shader compilation.
So this won’t be limited to Steam in the future, as you might expect.
Analysis: a notable caveat
If you think that precompiled shaders – which are still considered a beta feature at this point – are just going to speed things up in a unique way, that’s not strictly true. Yes, the game goes through this sometimes very demanding shader compilation process when you first run it, and it’s all done and dusted afterward – well, sort of.
The problem is that the game may need to recompile the shaders in certain scenarios, for example after a new GPU driver update or a game update. And when a game has a particularly long compilation process, this can be very annoying. On top of that, shader compilation can be done on the fly in-game, which can lead to stuttering, which the Precompiled Shaders feature completely avoids.
So you can see why this is a very useful advancement, even if it only applies in certain scenarios (and with supported games). And it’s also very useful for some handhelds, like the MSI Claw 8 AI+, which has an Intel Lunar Lake processor, where compiling shaders can be an exhausting task that hits the battery hard if you’re far from a power outlet.
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