The latest version of DirectStorage can load avocados 3x faster than ever before

pcgamer.com:

DirectStorage is Microsoft's way of speeding up load times in games and allowing developers to better take advantage of speedy SSDs. It's sure to be one of the biggest steps towards even more impressive and expansive games, once it's actually available in any, but even before we get our hands on it Microsoft's making it that much better.

Following the release of the DirectStorage API back in March(opens in new tab) (time flies), Microsoft has announced DirectStorage 1.1. Essentially, the newer version adds GPU decompression to proceedings, which offloads the time-consuming decompression work from your CPU and onto your highly-parallel GPU.

Traditionally, compressed game assets are transferred from your storage medium (mostly an SSD nowadays) to system memory, where your CPU will decompress the assets before shifting them on to your GPU as required.

With DirectStorage 1.1, it's possible to skip a whole lot of that and take a much more direct route. Assets are transferred from an NVMe SSD (DirectStorage 1.0 already speeds up this process) and transfers them directly to the GPU for decompression. Thus saving seconds or more in load times for assets.

"...scenes are loading nearly 3x faster and the CPU is almost entirely freed up to be used for other game processes," Microsoft confirms.

The end result should be games load quicker on PC, which is something we've seen the more proprietary Xbox and PlayStation console architectures have an advantage in for a little while now. Though following on from the first wave of games, when DirectStorage compatible PCs are more ubiquitous, developers should be able to really push the limits of what a game can be with more flexibility in load times, asset quality, and scale.

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