Microsoft’s DirectStorage Technology got my first outing on PC thanks tell firstand according to some new tests, the feature not only significantly increases load times (for those with the right hardware) but also in-game frame rates in certain scenarios.
neowin (opens in a new tab) flag up one videos on YouTube (opens in a new tab) in which Compusemble tested Forspoken, commenting: “DirectStorage has a pretty significant impact on framerate, frametime consistency, and GPU usage at 1080p, while it has almost no effect. used at a higher resolution.”
What seems to be happening here, Compusemble further explains, is that DirectStorage only works like this to increase the frame rate when the game is CPU limited, meaning the processor is struggling with the workload. its, while the graphics card still works fine.
That’s when playing Forspoken at 1080p (Full HD resolution) for Compusemble, but when turning the resolution to 1440p, the Youtuber becomes GPU-limited instead – and the framerate boost disappears into thin air.
Test was done with Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G (2TB) SSD in one gaming computer with an RTX 3080 Ti graphics card plus a Ryzen 7 7700X CPU. Remember, to take full advantage of DirectStorage, you need an NVMe SSD and moreover running Windows 11 for better results than Windows 10 (tested PC used 11 . window).
Analysis: New GPU decompression technology in action? Not so, in fact…
We know that DirectStorage will do more than just speed up load times, and it will make a difference in massive open-world environments, speeding up in-game content loading quickly. But this is the first convincing proof that this technology can actually increase frame rates on PCs – at least in certain situations, namely when the GPU is not performing well, but CPU are getting hammer.
So this might make you think this is clear evidence that the GPU decompression technology in DirectStorage 1.1 – the latest version that Forspoken uses – is coming here. This allows the GPU to handle the decompression of game content (compressed for size reasons), and the graphics card can do this much more efficiently than the CPU – reducing the load on the latter part. difficulty and thus improve frame rates in CPU-limited situations.
It’s obvious theory, but like Digital foundry (opens in a new tab) separately pointed out, even though Forspoken uses DirectStorage 1.1, it’s clear that GPU decompression isn’t really working here, as “there’s no spike in GPU compute usage when the game is under dedicated load” (while obviously it will if the card is busy with unpacking).
Overall, this is a bit of a weird issue, and as Digital Foundry (and others) have noticed, there are quite a few issues and glitches with Forspoken on PC. (Not exactly rare with games suffer a lot of delayand indeed console ports, so to speak).
Of course, the conclusions we can draw from a single game are limited, but we can say that if these are results without using GPU decompression, it’s interesting to imagine. imagine what other games that actually use this technology can do for aspect ratio (at least away from high resolution). Though that excitement is somewhat tempered when we think about what the next DirectStorage game on PC could be – it’s still unclear.
We simply don’t know anything else about what games will be supported on the Windows platform after Forspoken, which is a bit ominous to suggest waiting for a second title – if any luck comes along. DS 1.1 declaration is even better – maybe a long one. But next year, maybe DirectStorage will become a compelling reason for gamers to upgrade to Windows 11 if they haven’t made the leap from Windows 10.
