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Microsoft announced DirectStorage 1.1 with greatly improved performance

Microsoft has announced that they are going to release DirectStorage 1.1 with GPU Decompression to developers by the end of 2022. It will include GPU decompression of game resources which is nearly 3x faster that the classic CPU process.

Every character, object, and landscape in games has “assets” describing characteristics like shape, lighting, and color. This adds up to hundreds of gigabytes of data. To reduce the overall package size of a game, these assets are compressed.  To be loaded into video memory, they need to be decompressed. Historically, game assets have been optimized for CPU decompression. DirectStorage improves this in a great way.

With DirectStorage 1.0, Microsoft made reading them much faster thanks to new APIs that go well with NVMe disks.

DirectStorage 1.1 moves the decompression of resources to the GPU side. GPUs can efficiently perform repeatable tasks in parallel, so combined with NVMe, the amount of time it takes for an asset to load decreases. Microsoft's test show that scenes are loading nearly 3x faster.

DirectStorage 1.1 GPU Decompression Test

While DirectStorage is available on Windows 10, some of it optimizations are exclusive to Windows 11. Anyway, games that use DirectStorage 1.1 with GPU decompression will run fast than before even on Windows 10.

To have best gaming experience, you need an NVMe SSD, and any DirectX 12 capable GPU that supports Shader Model 6.0.

Source: Microsoft

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

4 thoughts on “Microsoft announced DirectStorage 1.1 with greatly improved performance”

  1. Sergey: You’ve got two typos in your headline. DirectStrorage should be DirectStorage. And Improved should be Improve. HTH, and let me know if you ever want some editing help.
    Best wishes,
    –Ed–

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