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Software | Windows 11 Pro |
Microsoft released a major update to DirectStorage, the API that promises to reduce game loading times. The new DirectStorage 1.2 adds the ability to speed up game loading for mechanical hard drives, a feature game developers requested from Microsoft. DirectStorage brings much of the storage sub-system secret sauce of consoles over to PC, and consoles have held on to mechanical HDDs as game storage devices longer than mainstream gaming PCs.
HDDs require buffered reads to compensate for the longer seek times, whereas DirectStorage traditionally accesses files in unbuffered mode, which disqualified HDDs for DirectStorage. With this update, HDDs can take advantage of DirectStorage, wherein game data stored on them is directly accessed by GPUs, and compressed game assets are decompressed on the fly through the compute-shader acceleration capabilities of modern GPUs.
Microsoft also added a means for a game to know whether compressed assets are being decompressed by the GPU, or whether a software (CPU) fallback is engaged for reasons such as incompatible compression/file format. This feedback mechanism allows the game to adjust its asset quality (such as texture resolution), to compensate for the reduced decompression performance.
Microsoft has progressively relaxed the hardware requirements for DirectStorage with each major release. It was originally restricted to NVMe SSDs as the storage device, but was extended to AHCI devices such as SATA SSDs, and now with this release, support is extended to mechanical HDDs.
Many Thanks to TumbleGeorge for the tip!
View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source
HDDs require buffered reads to compensate for the longer seek times, whereas DirectStorage traditionally accesses files in unbuffered mode, which disqualified HDDs for DirectStorage. With this update, HDDs can take advantage of DirectStorage, wherein game data stored on them is directly accessed by GPUs, and compressed game assets are decompressed on the fly through the compute-shader acceleration capabilities of modern GPUs.
Microsoft also added a means for a game to know whether compressed assets are being decompressed by the GPU, or whether a software (CPU) fallback is engaged for reasons such as incompatible compression/file format. This feedback mechanism allows the game to adjust its asset quality (such as texture resolution), to compensate for the reduced decompression performance.
Microsoft has progressively relaxed the hardware requirements for DirectStorage with each major release. It was originally restricted to NVMe SSDs as the storage device, but was extended to AHCI devices such as SATA SSDs, and now with this release, support is extended to mechanical HDDs.
Many Thanks to TumbleGeorge for the tip!
View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source