DirectStorage on Windows 11: Everything you need to know
If you’ve been following trends in gaming tech, you might have come across the term DirectStorage. The technology was the same utilized on Microsoft’s new-generation consoles, Xbox Series X and Series S, to quicken the load time of games.
In the wake of this and its promises over the past year, Microsoft is now bringing the feature to PC gaming, and the new yet-to-be-stable Windows 11 is supported.
But before you go bouncing off the walls, you might want to learn how DirectStorage works and how to take full advantage of it on your Windows 11 PC. Read on below to find out.
How Does DirectStorage Work?
Year in and year out, we keep witnessing the releases of dramatically faster Solid State Drives (SSDs), with some able to read gigabytes of data per second. You can even get SSDs that can attain a solid 7 gigabytes per second for your PC, provided your PC’s motherboard supports the latest SSD interface for this insane transfer speed.
This is exciting in the real sense, but the technology is achieved via compression. Compression squeezes data into an encoded form so that it’ll take unconventionally less space on your drive. This allows data to be transferred rapidly, and when it’s finally decompressed, the actual size may come in two folds.
But there’s only so much speed that can be attained without solid computing power. This technology gulps the available CPU resources, and remember, other programs and background processes compete for these resources, weighing and slowing down the CPU in the long run.
This deficiency is where DirectStorage comes into play. It shifts the responsibility of compressing and decompressing game data from the Central Processing Unit (CPU) to the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). The GPU is efficient at performing the much-needed process of decompressing data quickly and in real-time.
Moreover, if we consider that the game data compressed by the GPU is what the GPU will use in rendering the game anyway, this technology makes a lot more sense. The assets are assigned where they should be with it, giving the CPU the much-needed breather.
How Does DirectStorage Benefit Your Gaming Experience on a Windows 11 PC?
The development of DirectStorage technology stemmed from the constant changes in the way games interact with data. Asking for data in small chunks or compressed states is now the order of the day.
Unlike previous storage APIs, DirectStorage is promised to keep the entire data pipeline, including the decompression process, disk, and game rendering. This makes the whole process efficient. It also attenuates the overhead from humongous data requests.
Final Notes
While DirectStorage is at its early stages on Windows 11, there are hardware and software requirements for you to take full advantage of it, one of which is the presence of an NVMe drive on your PC. When it comes to GPU, a DirectX 12 GPU should suffice but with support for Shader Model 6.0.
Anything from RDNA2-enabled AMD GPUs and Nvidia RTX 2000 series should get you up and running. Directstorage will manifest automatically on your PC for games that support and take advantage of the technology.
