In a new blog post via the Windows Experience Blog, Microsoft have detailed some of the improvements they’ve made since the ROG Xbox Ally launched, how Windows is performing on ARM, and new DirectX advances that have boosted ray-tracing performance. Overall though, the Redmond giant has said that the work on the ROG Xbox Ally has “made gaming on Windows better across all devices”.
The blog post details plenty of interesting information but starts off talking about how Microsoft have focused on Windows 11 gaming becoming ‘faster, more portable and more visually immersive.‘ They list some pretty interesting details in here, but the section that stood out to me was how much these new waves of handheld devices and a gaming focus is pushing Microsoft to do better.
HandHeld Innovation
It seems the release of the ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Full Screen Experience resulted in an elevated handheld experience and that the partnership ‘made gaming on Windows better across all devices‘, at least according to Microsoft. In particular, they talked a little bit about Advanced Shader Delivery, which we’ve reported on previously.
Per the blog post, “Advanced Shader Delivery on the ROG Xbox Ally handhelds gets you into the fun faster by delivering precompiled shaders at install time, eliminating most of the wait time and stuttering when you launch a game for the first time.
The numbers speak for themselves: in Avowed, first-run load time dropped by over 80% and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 dropped by over 95%. Dozens of titles on the Xbox PC app now support ASD, with more on the way—thanks to the collaboration between AMD and Microsoft.“
They also shared that the ROG Xbox Ally pushed Microsoft to deliver “console-style performance on Windows 11, treating responsiveness as a system-wide priority optimized end-to-end in partnership with game developers.” This included things like tuned power management and profiles, and more efficient unified memory behaviour, among other things.
A lot of these improvements are working hand in hand with AMD – Per the blog, “AMD shipped driver optimizations, improved UMA performance, reduced CPU overhead in the graphics stack and provided game-specific fixes through driver releases. These improvements began with handhelds but now benefit the broader Windows ecosystem.“
There’s a ton more in there on Windows on ARM, DirectX improvements and more, so go check the full blog post right here.
Do you feel gaming on Windows 11 is getting better? Let us know in the XboxEra Forums or make some noise in the lively XboxEra Community Discord Server. If you’re looking to be a bigger part of an amazing community, then either choice is a good one!
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