In June 2021, Microsoft stated that DirectStorage API would be exclusive to Windows 11. As we said in our story, this would have a negative effect on its adoption rate. And it appears we were right as MS has just revealed that Windows 10 will also support DirectStorage.
As Microsoft stated:
“Microsoft is committed to ensuring that when game developers adopt a new API, they can reach as many gamers as possible. As such, games built against the DirectStorage SDK will be compatible with Windows 10, version 1909 and up; the same as the DirectX 12 Agility SDK.”
And there you have it. Windows 10 will officially support DirectStorage. As for Windows 11, MS stated that games running on Windows 11 will benefit further from new storage stack optimizations.
Lastly, here are the key features of DirectStorage:
- The new DirectStorage API programming model that provides a DX12-style batched submission/completion calling pattern, relieving apps from the need to individually manage thousands of IO requests/completion notifications per second
- GPU decompression providing super-fast asset decompression for load time and streaming scenarios (coming in a later preview)
- Storage stack optimizations: On Windows 11, this consists of an upgraded OS storage stack that unlocks the full potential of DirectStorage, and on Windows 10, games will still benefit from the more efficient use of the legacy OS storage stack
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Excellent news!
At last conference Game Stack 2021 MS released tech demo which show how GPU load and unload video memory using Direct Storage
Direct Storage combined with Sampler Feedback give games unlimited virtual video memory. GPU no longer need to load whole textures to video memory. Instead GPU check Sampler Feedback which part of every texture is currently visible on screen and use Direct Storage to load only that small part of every texture. Texture parts which is not visible are unloaded from video memory
Source?
Found it. Now it just says: DirectStorage requires an NVMe SSD to store and run games that use the “Standard NVM Express Controller” driver and a DirectX12 GPU with Shader Model 6.0 support.
Which makes sense, because SATA isn’t even fast enough to take advantage of DirectStorage.
Mesh Shading will be popular in games exclusive to PC and Xbox. When it was launched in 2018 with Nvidia RTX very few people had those GPU. But now in 2021 it is also supported by Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and AMD RDNA2. Only PS5 don’t support Mesh Shaders.
Microsoft games exclusive to PC and Xbox like next Doom, Wolfenstein or Starfield will use Mesh Shaders. MS just need to drop support for older consoles and old graphics cards before RTX
And have 10K sales max for their games.
New games exclusive to Xbox Series, RTX and RDNA2 will be available in late 2022 (Starfield). Millions of players will play.
In 2022 RTX on PC will be 5 years old technology, available to everyone. Xbox Series will be 2 years old. Millions of people will play next-gen games
5yo technology and still pricey as f**k, especially during scamdemic.
crying?
Will be interesting to see how well windows10 will handle this as its storage + filesystem isn’t really built for for latency/throughput – rather having robustness and security as main metrics.
Would not be surpriced if the win11 solution will have something in the line of a separate partition (or even drive) that can be handled separately – That would allow a much leaner approach focusing on low latency and high speed… and on top more secure. Will laugh if a “gfx” shader could be used as a virus payload.
People claiming games won’t leverage this are delusional and Demon Souls on PS5 already did this for asset streaming. When demoed on PC in development builds Demon Souls was a stuttering mess, just like Jedi Fallen Order, which hiccups every time there is asset loading, even on the fastest CPU and fastest SSD in the world. There is a reason Tim Sweeney and Unreal jumped all over this. Unreal engine games, which targeted visuals as high as Demon Souls, were completely bottlenecked by having to wait on the CPU.
When demoing the new Unreal Engine, they claimed a 970 EVO NVMe SSD would be fast enough to do what the engine is targeting on the new consoles and demoed with the PS5. That is 3500 Read. The Xbox is 2.4 Read so cross platform games may often go to the lowest denominator or Xbox just might have to run lower textures. The PS5 is 5500 Read. 1 TB PCI-E 4’s are already 7000 Read at 189 bucks, but the faster one’s have a lot less use hours than cheaper 150 dollar 5000 read models and I would buy those.
Either buy a modern SSD in the next year or two or deal with stutter from then on. This is simply the future on any games that won’t target last gen consoles.
PS5 don’t support Direct Storage
No, but it’s using a similar technique/functionality, just not the direct microsoft implementation.
Sony can’t implement such technology. They can’t even support own M2 SSD extension or support simple VRR and you want Direct Storage?
Sony can’t implement such technology. They can’t even support own M2 SSD extension or simple VRR. This is too advanced for Sony
Literally dumber than dirt. They already had it in their SDK years ago. Sony doesn’t need MS. They are board members of Khronos who oversees Vulkan. The Sony ICE team simply takes Vulkan and tweaks it, just like they did with OpenGL.
https://youtu.be/9O–CnN056E
Great, now get rid of the 1TB requirement for NVMe drives
Direct Storage + Sampler Feedback demo from 2021 Game Stack Conference
Nearly unlimited virtual video memory – GPU check which parts of every texture was used in last frame (sampler feedback) and load from SSD only visible parts of textures for next frames (direct storage). Whole algorithm fully executed on GPU without any use of CPU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3ajo6khF9E
Supported by:
– all Nvidia RTX cards since 2018
– all AMD RDNA2 cards
– both Xbox Series X and Series S
– Windows 10 and Windows 11
All this technology started with Radeon SSG. Professional GPU which have integrated 1 TB SSD. With Direct Storage GPU don’t need internal SSD because it can directly access any NVME drive without asking CPU. All works just like on Radeon SSG few years ago but with any NVME drive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COM3oKuF_t0
It does have a working game. Demon Souls on PS5. When demoed on PC the game was a stuttering mess just like Jedi Fallen Order. Want PC games to be a stuttering mess with more detailed worlds and streaming assets that games will target with the new consoles? Then go get a 3500 Read (per Unreal engine) SSD. Otherwise enjoy the stuttering. Just bought a PCI-E Gen 4 Inland 1 TB for 159 bucks with a heatsink and 5000 read that had way more use hours than the others. The PS5 is 5500.
PS5 does not support Direct Storage, a Microsoft technology
Watch the Digital Foundry deep dive with the studio. They talk about asset streaming with the SSD. You are possibly the dumbest group of people I have ever conversed with.
>Hardware Unboxed did the test and it made no difference at all with SATA SSDs and they even compared with HDDs and there are loading time differences only varied per game that too.
No sh*t, since you’re constrained by the link speed limitations of SATA, of course it won’t.
Where it makes a difference is in NVMe/PCIe based storage and PCIe cards as well that aren’t storage.
If you’re using SATA SSDs, then of course you don’t care about PCIe 4.
SATA is limited to SATA3 link speeds (6gbit/sec – 750MB/sec) (and SAS is limited to 12gbit/sec – 1.5GB/s in the latest revision) whereas PCIe 3.0 is a maximum of 16GB/sec in an x16 slot, and PCIe 4.0 is a maximum of 64GB/sec in an x16 slot.
So with a standard x4 NVMe SSD, you’re looking at a potential maximum of 4GB/sec transfer rate vs 0.75GB/sec of SATA.
That reduced latency and increased bandwidth make a hell of a difference for being able to use the storage for a lot of other purposes (such as streaming directly into GPU memory) enabling a whole host of techniques to improve graphics and reduce on-GPU memory usage.
But to say PCIe 4.0 is “useless” or makes no difference at all is just completely flat out wrong (especially if you’re judging it based on tech that’s already constrained instead of proper storage). Hell, moving to a Gen4 SSD in one of my systems cut build times in half on one of the larger projects, which is huge. That’s not gaming, but in reality, like I pointed out – SATA SSDs and regular HDDs will see no benefit at all and there’s no point in even bringing them up.
That is because EA isn’t going to migrate an Unreal 4 game to Unreal 5 dumb dumb. EA hasn’t even fixed stormstrooper bodies floating in the Battlefront 2 campaign. My god are you people stupid. The fact you got upvotes is scary. The only console game in existence that uses this asset streaming that bypasses the CPU is Demon Souls.
IGN article with the lead dev of the new Dead Space game.
“We don’t want anything to pull you out of the experience and we don’t want any cuts,” Campos Oriola said. [The faster SSDs of new consoles mean] there’s not going to be any loading. There’s not going to be any moment where we’re going to cut your experience, where we’re going to cut your camera. You can play it from the start screen to the end credits seamlessly.”
Have a nice day degenerate coomer.
so no need for windows 11
Pretty much.
W11 >>>>> W10 so still a need
Stop fanboying so much on windows 11 its kinda lame
How so?
But it’s OK to fanboying on that trash Windows 10, right?
I’m soooooooooo surprised!
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bdbded67e2f2ba076a06d27159b61899d0c41f014c3f1caf650d26d87761d0e4.jpg
Well guess I wont upgrade to windows 11 after all
Doesn’t make W10 any better so better working W11 is still worth it.
Bill Gates is that you.
Bill wouldn’t s**t on W10.