Do you think direct storage will really work? Me skeptical

[Lynben]

The reason why I am skeptical is the amount of ram our graphics card have. Games (esp. AAA titles) uses a lot of vram.

That's why I am wondering wouldnt direct storage reduce the amount of VRAM available to the games since you need space to stored compressed textures (in order to decompress them).

Then, if there is insufficient vram, it's going to reduce performance..

 

[Koenig168]

Direct storage does not mean textures are stored on VRAM instead of SSD.

To simplify a bit, it means textures when needed (for example) are moved from SSD direct to VRAM instead of SSD-to-CPU-to-VRAM.

 

[Phen8210]

Please note, also the key points of GPU decompress vs CPU decompress.

 

[watzup_ken]

While loading times may improve for example, there may be a performance hit given that the GPU is now also tasked to perform the decompression. This is just my guess, but its clear that the load is no more sitting with the CPU which is usually not working terribly hard at higher resolution, to the GPU which is already working very hard at 1440p or higher.

 

[Yongkit]

Do a check on your current system if your GPU + OS + SSD supported it.

https://www.pcgamer.com/check-your-pc-for-directstorage-support-today/
As of now I know my system is ready:



I am currently using Windows 11, in case your drive status giving you the Bypass IO not supported it could be mainly due to your current 3rd party antivirus program have not updated it and you will need to wait for the official update when DirectStorage is officially available in game.

I do experience the BYpass IO support issue before, until I removed & reinstall my bitdefender.

Also you should check your "Device Security" should active and work overall as screenshot below:

 

[Lynben]

Direct storage does not mean textures are stored on VRAM instead of SSD.

To simplify a bit, it means textures when needed (for example) are moved from SSD direct to VRAM instead of SSD-to-CPU-to-VRAM.

Yes, compressed textures are moved from SSD to ram to vram. The gpu will then decompress the textures. Compressed textures are stored in VRAM prior to decompression.

Without direct storage, cpu does the decompression instead.

 

[Lynben]

While loading times may improve for example, there may be a performance hit given that the GPU is now also tasked to perform the decompression. This is just my guess, but its clear that the load is no more sitting with the CPU which is usually not working terribly hard at higher resolution, to the GPU which is already working very hard at 1440p or higher.

Yes I do agree on this. Given the multi-core cpus we have today, I am not sure if there is any need for gpu to perform decompression.

 

[Yongkit]

https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/a...mes-and-apps-with-gdeflate-for-directstorage/
Nvidia on GDeflate for DirectStorage

 

[tsteo77]

I though the Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling feature also does similar function of passing visual
and graphical task to GPU ? Direct storage is just an improved version of it and both need the titles to support
for them to be usable.

 

[Phen8210]

I though the Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling feature also does similar function of passing visual
and graphical task to GPU ? Direct storage is just an improved version of it and both need the titles to support
for them to be usable.

tbh don't need to care abt it atm, new implementations need time to mature for it to be seamless.

 

[watzup_ken]

If you look at Square Enix first stab at Direct Storage, I feel while the results look good, it also shows that there is very little reason to spend a lot on high end SSDs. While it is not mentioned which M2 SSD was used in the comparison against which SATA3 SSD, the improvement quoted, "about twice as fast", is not a meaningful gain when they are talking about a couple of seconds of loading time. At this point, it makes little sense to get a SATA3 SSD because the prices are very close to low to mid tier PCI-E 3.0 and 4.0 SSDs, but the bottomline is that PCI-E 5.0 SSD may not be worth getting if gaming is the main reason for looking for a high end SSD. In fact, having used an Xbox Series X couple of years back, that built in SSD was not blazing fast, but game load time is already incredibly fast.

https://www.techspot.com/news/96597-microsoft-releases-directstorage-11-developers.html

 

[Yongkit]

https://gpuopen.com/amd-support-for-microsoft-directstorage-1-1/
AMD on direct storage

 

[Rogue]

Look at the bandwidth between GPU decompression vs CPU, imagine able to shuffle 8GB/s.... then later HDD which bottlenecks both down to 1.55.

Oh, it's GB not Gb... Techspot's article above uses Square enix as an example when version 1.1 is not even out during GDC 2022... Which brings to question when its game comes out, will it be cpu decompression or gpu decompression? FYI: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directstorage-1-1-now-available/

Forcing CPU Decompression​

There may be some cases where GPU decompression isn’t desirable. To globally disable GPU decompression, set the DisableGpuDecompression field in DSTORAGE_CONFIGURATION to TRUE. Games may wish to provide this option to users as a performance setting, in case they are running on a system that maybe has a significantly faster CPU than GPU.

 

[Yongkit]

https://www.techpowerup.com/310053/seagate-releases-directstorage-firmware-for-the-firecuda-530-ssd

 

[tsteo77]

I smell an evil scheme on software technique that offload tasks from cpu to gpu as due to a serious
design flaw in gpu's processor, all gpus can't actually take too much load. Unless replacing of thermal material
that is more than 100% effective in heat transfer from gpu's processor to heatsink is required due to the fact that
the metal die of gpu's processor is only about 35% and for cpu it's about 95%. This mean most computers are actually overheat but still running.

 

[ragnarok95]

I smell an evil scheme on software technique that offload tasks from cpu to gpu as due to a serious
design flaw in gpu's processor, all gpus can't actually take too much load. Unless replacing of thermal material
that is more than 100% effective in heat transfer from gpu's processor to heatsink is required due to the fact that
the metal die of gpu's processor is only about 35% and for cpu it's about 95%. This mean most computers are actually overheat but still running.

HWinfo doesn't lie.

 

[elmariachi]

https://www.techpowerup.com/310053/seagate-releases-directstorage-firmware-for-the-firecuda-530-ssd

Just flashed my firmware last night. Pain in the a55 as have to use powershell to flash it. So far so good no performance regression.

Crystaldiskmark before and after

Before : 7025mb/s Read 6803 mb/s Write
Write : 7062mb/s Read 6860mb/s Write

Pretty negligible difference so far have no directstorage game to test but all other games work the same. Cyberpunk and Hitman 3 seemed to load noticeably faster though.

 

[Yongkit]

Just flashed my firmware last night. Pain in the a55 as have to use powershell to flash it. So far so good no performance regression.

Crystaldiskmark before and after

Before : 7025mb/s Read 6803 mb/s Write
Write : 7062mb/s Read 6860mb/s Write

Pretty negligible difference so far have no directstorage game to test but all other games work the same. Cyberpunk and Hitman 3 seemed to load noticeably faster though.

Possible to test on forspoken demo?

In gaming I think read and IOPS reading is more critical than write speed

 

[elmariachi]

Possible to test on forspoken demo?

In gaming I think read and IOPS reading is more critical than write speed

I'll go download tonight and try.

 

[Yongkit]

The direct storage feature on horizon forbidden west really very impressive from the launcher to in game within 13 seconds