Thursday, June 24th 2021
Microsoft DirectStorage Walled Off from Windows 10, Now Needs Windows 11 and DirectX 12 Ultimate GPU
Microsoft's ambitious DirectStorage API, which attempts to solve the storage bottleneck in games, facilitating faster game load times, has been walled off from Windows 10. To use it, games now require the new Windows 11 operating system, and a GPU that supports the DirectX 12 Ultimate API. This limits the GPU choices to NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 20-series, RTX 30-series, and AMD's Radeon RX 6000 series.
The other hardware requirement intrinsic to DirectStorage is for you to use an NVMe SSD that uses Microsoft's "Standard NVM Express Controller" driver that's included with Windows. Another hardware requirement that's baffling is that the SSD should be at least 1 TB in capacity. DirectStorage facilitates compressed game asset data to be transferred directly to the GPU from the storage device, and for it to be uncompressed by the GPU (using compute shaders), so there is a significant reduction in storage sub-system latency, and CPU utilization, impacting game load times.
Sources:
Microsoft, dampflokfreund (Reddit)
The other hardware requirement intrinsic to DirectStorage is for you to use an NVMe SSD that uses Microsoft's "Standard NVM Express Controller" driver that's included with Windows. Another hardware requirement that's baffling is that the SSD should be at least 1 TB in capacity. DirectStorage facilitates compressed game asset data to be transferred directly to the GPU from the storage device, and for it to be uncompressed by the GPU (using compute shaders), so there is a significant reduction in storage sub-system latency, and CPU utilization, impacting game load times.
103 Comments on Microsoft DirectStorage Walled Off from Windows 10, Now Needs Windows 11 and DirectX 12 Ultimate GPU
Some official info says Win11 + NVMe PCIe3.0 1TB or more + ShaderModel6 ... but sometimes DX12 Ultimate is communicated as if it was minimum requirement.
also resizeableBAR was never mentioned in any DirectStorage context and is not needed
Microsoft really needs to clarify this whole deal.
Assuming a HDD that reads at 200 MB/s, with a seek time of 10 ms, a seek "costs" 2 MB. Once the data is in memory access to it is constant-costthat is very plausible, because you can load stuff from disk very fast, so you can aggressively garbage collect in memory
Also the 1TB drive and DX12 ultimate requirement seems to have been removed from DirectStorage requirements.
- DirectStorage requires an NVMe SSD to store and run games that use the "Standard NVM Express Controller" driver and a DirectX12 GPU with Shader Model 6.0 support.
Windows 11 Specifications - MicrosoftBut they have to nudge us on somehow.
im searching right now be kind im no wizzard
Why?!
WHO???!!
Yeah thought it was funny not to see skylake-x listed at all my poor 9940x was crying lol
As far as direct storage... well I can live without it.
And look, if W11 wont slow to a crawl when i try and copy a few hundred or thousand tiny files around, that'd be awesome
My 2700K is really showing its age now and in fact, the W11 check tool said that it couldn't run it, although it didn't explain why. I suspect that it's due to the lack of the TPM chip as that was the only thing that didn't match the requirements. Looks like I have to upgrade my system just to keep up with the latest OS, never mind performance.
Also the Skylake-X Xeons are listed.
Yes this is non professional comment, hate me!
I hope more and more developers will switch to Vulkan. Not only it's faster than D3D12 for some reasons, it also works on all modern and recent OSes, including Windows 7.