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Microsoft's Direct Storage coming soon to Windows 10 and here is what you will need to use it.

Vasto

Member
It was announced last year that Microsoft will enable a technology called DirectStorage on Windows 10 systems, ie on the PC platform, which is developed for faster loading of games on Xbox Series X and S consoles. It is a technology that solves the problem of obsolescence and limitations of program interfaces in executing a large number of requests to load data into memory.

In other words, DirectStorage technology solves the invisible problem we've had for years - that game loading hasn't accelerated significantly, although data transfer speeds from SSDs have skyrocketed in recent years. No matter what kind of rabid PC you have, games due to the limitations of the programming interface could not use the full potential of the disk, no matter how fast it was.

That should change in the future and DirectStorage should become supported in the next major update of Windows 10. Microsoft has now revealed what hardware will be needed to reap the benefits of that technology.

Logically, you will need an NVMe SSD - nothing without it because the classic SATA interface SSDs will not get any benefits or improvements. But the good news is that you won’t need NVMe drives that use the PCIe 4.0 interface - as on XSX / S and PS5 consoles. The previous generation NVMe SSDs, ie PCIe 3.0, will also be supported.

As for graphics cards, we have good news here too. DirectStorage will be able to be used by all cardholders that support DirectX 12, which means the oldest GTX 600 series or Radeon HD 7000 series.

In theory, all games made exclusively for the DirectX 12 API will be able to take advantage of DirectStorage and speed up downloads. It could also help them in performance because DirectStorage also releases a processor, so if you have a mid-range processor - it will be easier to "breathe" in games.


 

jroc74

Phone reception is more important to me than human rights
Thats good news for NVMe's. I have 2 thats PCIe 3.0, now I wont need to go higher/more expensive.

Props to Ms here, this will hopefully make another significant step for pc gaming and direct x12. Bring it on.
Game development on PC.......gaming is about to be amazing across the board. This gives me so much hope for 3rd party games.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
DirectStorage is from MS. so it's in their best interest to make it work for as many systems as possible. if it were AMD/Nvidia then you can bet it'd be locked behind the latest models.
Yeah, I know, but still it wouldn't be out of ordinary to get some sort of deal from GPU manufacturers or/and GPU makers intentionally locking this in drivers.
 
Yeah, I know, but still it wouldn't be out of ordinary to get some sort of deal from GPU manufacturers or/and GPU makers intentionally locking this in drivers.
i don't see that happening. MS has a lot to gain from making this accessible to as many people as possible. it only benefits Windows 10 and DX12. doesn't matter if you have an AMD/Intel CPU or AMD/Nvidia GPU. MS wants everyone to use Windows 10/DX12.

Not unexpected that PCIe 3.0 is enough. After all, the XBox Series consoles use a PCIe 4.0 x2 connection, which is equivalent to PCIe 3.0 x4.
yup, my NVMe 3.0 is faster than Xbox's NVMe 4.0
 
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M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
i don't see that happening. MS has a lot to gain from making this accessible to as many people as possible. it only benefits Windows 10 and DX12. doesn't matter if you have an AMD/Intel CPU or AMD/Nvidia GPU. MS wants everyone to use Windows 10/DX12.


yup, my NVMe 3.0 is faster than Xbox's NVMe 4.0
Sure, but lets say that resizable bar feature, which is only on latest RTX and 6XXX cards (I believe AMD is calling it SAM). This is just memory mapping and has no reason to and this technology is also from Microsoft or rather it's a feature in Windows done by MS:

System and driver support for Resizable BAR - Windows drivers | Microsoft Docs
 

Dregnel

Member
so if i don't have NVMe PCI i can't use the feature or i can use an adaptador and use a NVMe sata in a port where the graphics cards are? when i bought my pc my friend told that i don't need this port
 
so if i don't have NVMe PCI i can't use the feature or i can use an adaptador and use a NVMe sata in a port where the graphics cards are? when i bought my pc my friend told that i don't need this port
Your friend WAS right, nvme offers little to no benefits at the moment.

If you get a PCIe 3.0 card with an nvme slot on it it will probably work, but I would let someone else test that setup. Also, don't be in a rush no games support it at the moment and it may take a while before you see a game you like that really benefit from the technology.
 
developers need to start moving to DX12 full time. too many games it's still in "beta" and unstable as hell.
I was unaware of this situation in newish games, certainly nothing released in the last two years or so, dx12 or vulkan are the main graphics APIs. Buy, If it has so much problem it might be that there is something wrong with dx12, because Vulkan is often the best choice anyway.

Also, Nvidia isn't great at dx12.
 

Dregnel

Member
Your friend WAS right, nvme offers little to no benefits at the moment.

If you get a PCIe 3.0 card with an nvme slot on it it will probably work, but I would let someone else test that setup. Also, don't be in a rush no games support it at the moment and it may take a while before you see a game you like that really benefit from the technology.
The money difference was so small at the time and now we both have to buy a new motherboard, i will wait like you said, thanks.
 
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DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
Thats good news for NVMe's. I have 2 thats PCIe 3.0, now I wont need to go higher/more expensive.


Game development on PC.......gaming is about to be amazing across the board. This gives me so much hope for 3rd party games.
Too true! Exciting times ahead.
 

Snake29

RSI Employee of the Year
I was unaware of this situation in newish games, certainly nothing released in the last two years or so, dx12 or vulkan are the main graphics APIs. Buy, If it has so much problem it might be that there is something wrong with dx12, because Vulkan is often the best choice anyway.

Also, Nvidia isn't great at dx12.

DX12 feels like it's still in "beta" after all these years on PC. We might see more developers use Vulkan over DX in the future.
 
DX12 feels like it's still in "beta" after all these years on PC. We might see more developers use Vulkan over DX in the future.
Vulkan is the library of choice for graphics as far as I know right now (Metal like Apple has seems pretty solid too, but this is another discussion). Anyway, I'm pretty sure they can use the storage features of DX with the vulkan graphics calls.
The money difference was so small at the time and now we both have to buy a new motherboard, i will wait like you said, thanks.
Used is probably your best bet, depending on the age of the thing it might be pretty affordable, but you never know these days "vintage" hardware can be pretty expensive.
"DirectStorage also releases a processor"?
I noticed that, I assume it's either a CPU core or just a twisted way of saying that it uses less CPU time for decompression (because that's not handled by the GPU).

The whole piece reads like a document written in another language and translated with google translate.
 
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Allandor

Member
Well, there is still the problem on PC that having multiple nvme drives is more or less very rare. If your lucky, your motherboard supports 2 m.2 SSDs. M.2 is still no real alternative for SATA while there are only so few ports and SSDs are still a bit to expensive if you want a huge and fast quantity.
But well, this can all change in the next few years, but e.g. a new SATA 4 standard would be better
 

rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
"Logically, you will need an NVMe SSD - nothing without it because the classic SATA interface SSDs will not get any benefits or improvements."

So SATA SSDs never could use their full speeds and never will? Fuck you, MS!!!
 

Allandor

Member
"Logically, you will need an NVMe SSD - nothing without it because the classic SATA interface SSDs will not get any benefits or improvements."

So SATA SSDs never could use their full speeds and never will? Fuck you, MS!!!
The problem here is more, that you don't have a bottleneck in the decompression department that makes a big difference. If the data is only delivered with e.g. 500MB/s you must wait for the data and can decompress it on the fly. Whatever you do, you will be more IO limited than CPU limited here.
But with a fast nvme drive, that goes beyond 1GB/s you are CPU limited quite fast and the IO is no longer relevant. So optimizing the process will be much better.

I still think SATA drives will still get some advantages because instead of preload data in loading screens, even SSDs should be able to stream at least some of the required data, but e.g. you might need enough main memory to create a big buffer to compensate for the nvme speed.

But I still think we need a new SATA standard, so we can also have a much larger SSD capacity that is not directly on the mainboard but instead located anywhere in the PC tower, where it can be easily cooled. The Mainboard is not the optimal spot to get much of the airflow.
 
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