Microsoft acknowledged only in the near previous that it plans to unlock DirectStorage 1.1 by the top of 2022, improving scene loading times by a factor of three and dramatically speeding up PC games as a consequence.
Microsoft announced the distinctive DirectStorage API in March, promising to dramatically speed up sport loading times by optimizing gameplay with NVMe SSDs for PCs. Now, Microsoft is taking the following step: offloading the decompression of the sport’s resources to the GPU, in preference to the CPU, and speeding up games even additional.
Microsoft acknowledged in a most up to date blog put up that DirectStorage 1.1 will require normally the identical hardware as DirectStorage 1.0: an NVMe SSD, plus any DirectX GPU that supports Shader Model 6.0. Microsoft makes positive that you just’ll be ready to play DirectStorage 1.1 games on any succesful hardware, nonetheless that the DirectStorage advantages will simplest be seen on the SSD/GPU aggregate. Likewise, you’ll be ready to play these games on Windows 10 or Windows 11, nonetheless Windows 11 contains optimizations in the I/O stack that enable the sport to slouch most effectively on Windows 11.
Microsoft outlined that most games compress their resources to keep home, appropriate up until the time they’re being aged. This loyal-time decompression might also keep home for your onerous power or SSD, nonetheless it surely charges time and computational effort to affect. It moreover device that a GPU (that might no longer be in spend until the sport or scene loads) will be sitting lazy, whereas your PC’s CPU will be wired by all forms of quite quite quite a bit of projects. Microsoft simply proposes switching which part is doing the work.
Microsoft acknowledged that scenes loaded three times sooner the utilization of DirectStorage 1.1—0.8 seconds versus 2.36 seconds, namely. “When DirectStorage 1.1 [is] released, it kicks off a new dash for sport developers to plot beefy spend of gaming hardware and speed up load times for PC games over the following couple of years,” Microsoft wrote.
Microsoft isn’t announcing when it will unlock DirectStorage 1.1 to shoppers, loyal that it will unlock the API to developers sooner than the top of the yr. Those hardware and sport makers will possess an opportunity to test it sooner than it’s released to shoppers. Microsoft has acknowledged that it will be moving support to a single annual characteristic update for Windows 11, nonetheless it surely will add smaller updates vivid powerful anytime it needs. It will seemingly be in these small updates that Microsoft releases DirectStorage 1.1, and its consequent improvements to your PC.
Writer: Put Hachman, Senior Editor
As PCWorld’s senior editor, Put specializes in Microsoft news and chip technology, amongst other beats. He has beforehand written for PCMag, BYTE, Slashdot, eWEEK, and ReadWrite.
