NVIDIA and Microsoft Collaborate to Bring Neural Shading to DirectX, Revolutionizing Game Graphics

Nvidia teams up with Microsoft to put neural shading into DirectX, giving devs access to AI tensor cores

The DirectX preview appears to be an Nvidia exclusive, for now. Nvidia and Microsoft announced on Thursday that they would be adding neural shading support to the Microsoft DirectX preview this April. Neural shading will use cooperative vectors and Nvidia's Tensor cores (matrix operations units) to speed up graphics rendering in games that support the technology. It will better allow for the generic use, via HLSL (high level shading language) of traditional rendering techniques alongside AI enhancements. While real-time computer graphics and graphics processing units (GPUs) have come a long way, the graphics rendering pipeline itself has evolved slower than hardware. In particular, while Nvidia's GPUs have featured Tensor cores (primarily aimed at AI compute) for over seven years now, they have only been used so far for things like upscaling (Nvidia's DLSS), ray reconstruction (DLSS 3.5) and denoising, and frame generation (at least for DLSS 4). This is going to change with the so-called neural rendering -- a broad term that describes a real-time graphics rendering pipeline enhanced with new methods and capabilities enabled by AI. A specific subset of neural rendering focused on enhancing the shading process in graphics is called neural shading. Its main purpose is to improve the appearance of materials, lighting, shadows, and textures by integrating AI into the shading stage of the graphics pipeline. The addition of cooperative vectors -- which allow small neural networks to run in different shader stages, like within a pixel shader, without monopolizing the GPU -- is a key enabler for neural shading. Cooperative vectors rely on matrix-vector multiplication, so they need specialized hardware, such as Nvidia's Tensor cores, to operate. To that end, they can potentially work on Intel's XMX hardware as long as they meet Microsoft's requirements. They may also work on AMD's RDNA 4 AI accelerators, though RDNA 3 seems more doubtful (as it lacks AI compute throughput compared to the competition). Still, Microsoft is working with AMD, Intel, Nvidia, and Qualcomm to ensure cross-vendor support for cooperative vectors over time. "Microsoft is adding cooperative vector support to DirectX and HLSL, starting with a preview this April," said Shawn Hargreaves, Direct3D development manager at Microsoft. "This will advance the future of graphics programming by enabling neural rendering across the gaming industry. Unlocking Tensor Cores on Nvidia RTX GPUs will allow developers to fully leverage RTX Neural Shaders for richer, more immersive experiences on Windows." Our understanding -- we've reached out to AMD, Intel, and Nvidia for additional comment but haven't heard back -- is that the upcoming DirectX preview with cooperative vectors will start as an Nvidia exclusive. Once driver support is available from AMD and Intel, it should work on their GPUs as well. But we'll need to wait to find out not only whether it works, but how well it works -- both in terms of image fidelity as well as performance.

AI will be crammed in more of the graphics pipeline as Nvidia and Microsoft are bringing AI shading to a DirectX preview next month

Yes, I know: more AI. Love it or hate it, that's the way things are going. For us gamers, it started with upscaling, then frame gen, then Multi Frame Gen, and soon, it seems, fully AI-generated frames. At GDC today Nvidia announced that "neural shading support will come to DirectX preview in April, unlocking the power of AI Tensor Cores in NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs inside of graphics shaders used to program video games... "Nvidia RTX Neural Shaders SDK enables developers to train their game data and shader code on an RTX AI PC and accelerate their neural representations and model weights with Nvidia Tensor Cores at runtime. This significantly enhances the performance of neural rendering techniques, allowing for faster and more efficient real-time rendering with Tensor Cores." In other words, AI will be used not just to interpolate frames and generate new ones based on a traditionally rendered frame but also to help render that original frame. It's AI being added to another step of the rendering pipeline. The end-goal might presumably be to have the game engine tell the GPU information about the primary in-game qualities -- objects, movement, and so on -- and have AI flesh out the rest of the picture. It's difficult to imagine how that could work without any information on how to flesh out said picture, but that would be where the "game data and shader code" training comes in: Developers can give the AI model a good idea of what stuff should be like when rendered, and then when users actually play the game, the AI model can do its damndest to replicate that. As Nvidia's Blackwell white paper explains: "Rather than writing complex shader code to describe these [shader] functions, developers train AI models to approximate the result that the shader code would have computed." This will presumably be tailored to Blackwell given Nvidia has worked with Microsoft to develop the Cooperative Vectors API, though Nvidia does say that "some of [the developer-created neural shaders] will also run on prior generation GPUs." We already had an idea that this was in the works, as in December 2024 we saw Inno3D speak about "Neural Rendering Capabilities" in its then-upcoming graphics cards. We'd also seen mention of neural rendering from Nvidia before, but not in a context that could actually be implemented in games just yet. Nvidia VP of Developer Technology John Spitzer calls this "the future of graphics" and Microsoft Direct3D dev manager Shawn Hargreaves seems to agree, saying that its addition of "Cooperative Vectors support to DirectX and HLSL... will advance the future of graphics programming by enabling neural rendering across the gaming industry." It's almost a reflex for me to be sceptical of anything AI, but I must remember that my scepticism over frame gen has been slowly abated. I remember seeing character hands moving through the in-game HUDs and writing off DLSS 3 frame gen when it launched, but now those problems are rare and even latency isn't half-bad if you have a high baseline frame rate. So I'll try to keep my mind open to at least the possibility that this could actually be a step forward. At any rate, we'll find out before long -- just a few weeks until devs can start trying it out.

NVIDIA and Microsoft Partner Up in Neural Shading Technology

NVIDIA today announced ahead of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) groundbreaking enhancements to NVIDIA RTX neural rendering technologies. NVIDIA has partnered with Microsoft to bring neural shading support to the Microsoft DirectX preview in April, giving developers access to AI Tensor Cores in NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs to accelerate neural networks from within a game's graphics pipeline. Neural shading represents a revolution in graphics programming, combining AI with traditional rendering to dramatically boost frame rates, enhance image quality and reduce system resource usage. "Microsoft is adding cooperative vector support to DirectX and HLSL, starting with a preview this April," said Shawn Hargreaves, Direct3D development manager at Microsoft. "This will advance the future of graphics programming by enabling neural rendering across the gaming industry. Unlocking Tensor Cores on NVIDIA RTX will allow developers to fully leverage RTX Neural Shaders for richer, more immersive experiences on Windows." Neural Shaders Enable Photorealistic, Living Worlds With AI The next era of computer graphics will be based on NVIDIA RTX Neural Shaders, which allow the training and deployment of tiny neural networks from within shaders to generate textures, materials, lighting, volumes and more. This results in dramatic improvements in game performance, image quality and interactivity, delivering new levels of immersion for players. At the CES trade show earlier this year, NVIDIA introduced RTX Kit, a comprehensive suite of neural rendering technologies for building AI-enhanced, ray-traced games with massive geometric complexity and photorealistic characters. Now, at GDC, NVIDIA is expanding its powerful lineup of neural rendering technologies, including with Microsoft DirectX support and plug-ins for Unreal Engine 5. NVIDIA is partnering with Microsoft to bring neural shading support to the DirectX 12 Agility software development kit preview in April, providing game developers with access to RTX Tensor Cores to accelerate the performance of applications powered by RTX Neural Shaders. Plus, Unreal Engine developers will be able to get started with RTX Kit features such as RTX Mega Geometry and RTX Hair through the experimental NVIDIA RTX branch of Unreal Engine 5. These enable the rendering of assets with dramatic detail and fidelity, bringing cinematic-quality visuals to real-time experiences. Now available, NVIDIA's "Zorah" technology demo has been updated with new incredibly detailed scenes filled with millions of triangles, complex hair systems and cinematic lighting in real time - all by tapping into the latest technologies powering neural rendering, including: ReSTIR Path Tracing ReSTIR Direct Illumination RTX Mega Geometry RTX Hair

NVIDIA Announces RTX Neural Shading Support Going Live in April's DirectX Agility Preview

NVIDIA has kicked off the official GDC 2025 news rounds with a bang, revealing that official RTX Neural Shading support will go live next month thanks to an updated DirectX Agility SDK Preview released by Microsoft. While the RTX Kit has been available via GitHub since last month, the DirectX support will accelerate RTX Neural Shading with GeForce GPUs Tensor Cores. John Spitzer, NVIDIA VP of Developer Technology, said in a statement: Neural rendering is the future of graphics and we are happy to partner with Microsoft to bring AI to programmable shaders in DirectX. All game developers can use Tensor Cores built into GeForce RTX GPUs to deliver next-gen realism and performance to Windows gaming. Shawn Hargreaves, Direct3D Dev Manager at Microsoft, added: Microsoft is adding Cooperative Vectors support to DirectX and HLSL, starting with a preview this April. This will advance the future of graphics programming by enabling neural rendering across the gaming industry. Unlocking Tensor Cores on NVIDIA RTX will allow developers to fully leverage RTX Neural Shading for richer, more immersive experiences on Windows. For now, three main uses of RTX Neural Shading have been detailed: Needless to say, this is just a preview. It will be a while before it's officially released, and then we'll have to wait for game developers to actually implement the features. However, owners of the GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs are future-proof in this regard since the new graphics cards already support RTX Neural Shading. In other GDC 2025 news, NVIDIA demonstrated an updated version of the Zorah demo first showcased at CES. A sample will be available next week with the following features: RTX Mega Geometry, RTX Hair, ReSTIR Path Tracing, and ReSTIR Direct Illumination. Additionally, the NVIDIA RTX Unreal Engine 5 branch on GitHub was just updated with support for the RTX Mega Geometry and RTX Hair technologies. The former debuted in the most recent Alan Wake 2 patch, while the latter will do so in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle through an update. NVIDIA also confirmed that its ACE AI technology will debut when inZOI (whose system requirements have just been revealed) launches in early access on March 28, offering an on-device language model exclusively available on GeForce RTX GPUs. NVIDIA ACE will also be integrated later this month in NARAKA BLADEPOINT: MOBILE PC VERSION, where the AI will be a helpful game companion. The same will be added to Black Vultures: Prey of Greed, an upcoming MMOFPS by Korean developer WEMADE, previously codenamed This Means War.

NVIDIA & Microsoft Unlock RTX Neural Shaders For Next-Gen Graphics: Details - NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

NVIDIA Corporation NVDA shares are trading higher on Thursday. The company teamed up with Microsoft Corporation MSFT to introduce neural shading support in the Microsoft DirectX preview for April. Notably, Neural shading is a groundbreaking advancement in graphics programming, merging AI with traditional rendering techniques. This innovation significantly improves frame rates, enhances image quality, and reduces system resource consumption. This collaboration provides developers access to NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs' AI Tensor Cores, enabling the acceleration of neural networks directly within a game's graphics pipeline. Shawn Hargreaves, Direct3D development manager at Microsoft said, "This will advance the future of graphics programming by enabling neural rendering across the gaming industry. Unlocking Tensor Cores on NVIDIA RTX will allow developers to fully leverage RTX Neural Shaders for richer, more immersive experiences on Windows." Apart from this, the company disclosed significant upgradation to NVIDIA RTX Kit, which is a collection of neural rendering tools for game developers. The upgrade, which is disclosed ahead of the Game Developers Conference, includes support for Unreal Engine 5, including enhancements for RTX Mega Geometry and RTX Hair features. Investors can gain exposure to the NVDA stock via GraniteShares 2x Short NVDA Daily ETF NVD and Roundhill ETF Trust Roundhill NVDA WeeklyPay ETF NVW. Price Action: NVDA shares are up 0.55% at $116.38 at the last check Thursday. Read Next: Rise Of DeepSeek And Trump Tariff Threats Hurt Taiwan Stocks Including Taiwan Semiconductor Image via Shutterstock. NVDANVIDIA Corp$116.400.57%Stock Score Locked: Want to See it? Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Reveal Full ScoreEdge RankingsMomentum80.96Growth88.69Quality97.82Value7.11Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewMSFTMicrosoft Corp$381.71-0.41%NVDGraniteShares 2x Short NVDA Daily ETF$30.88-1.11%NVWRoundhill ETF Trust Roundhill NVDA WeeklyPay ETF$39.601.05% This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs