DirectStorage In Windows 11? What Is It? How Will It Change The Gaming World

On September 1, 2020, DirectStorage integration in Windows 11 was announced for the first time. Microsoft implemented the DirectStorage technology in Windows 11 just a few minutes ago.

An introduction and a brief explanation of the DirectStorage were given at the GDC (Game Developers Conference) 2022. The DirectStorage API uses faster SSDs to enhance the gaming experience and dramatically diminishes the game’s loading times.

Fans all over the globe, especially gaming enthusiasts, have been keen to know more about the new API’s release. The technology is a great step ahead toward strengthening Window’s positioning as the best operating system for gaming.

The first PC game to make use of the new API is the Forspoken. Next, many eyeballs have turned toward The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt to take a step forward with DirectX 12, DirectStorage support, and ray tracing.

Faster Loading Times Ahead With Microsoft’s DirectStorage API

Earlier, tech experts have always claimed that faster storage won’t have an impact on gaming performance. The launch of the API, however, ensures that games can finally make use of faster SSDs. The technology is specially created to be compatible with faster Gen 3, 4, and the upcoming Gen. 5 PCIe SSDs.

Will Windows 10 support this technology? Yes. However, it would be wrong to miss the fact that Windows 11 will offer far better optimization, leading to better performance.

A performance boost with all types of SSDs is expected, however, the NVMeSSDs will enhance the IO performance to a great extent. 

As per an official DirectStorage integration release announcement notice out in August 2022, Microsoft stated that it was working in many more ways to offload work from the CPU. to be precise, GPU decompression is coming next, and after its release, the developers will enjoy more control over resources and the ways they can utilize the hardware. This would be yet another big attempt by Microsoft to make Windows 11 cater to gamers.

The main objective of this new API is to stream data directly from an SSD to a GPU’s VRAM memory pool, entirely bypassing the CPU. 

Cooper Parkins, Microsoft engineer, lately expressed, "We're not going to stop there. We're going to continue to free up a lot more CPU cycles by finding more creative ways to offload decompression to other parts of the system... In a future release, you'll be able to use DirectStorage to decompress assets using the GPU. This is more CPU savings for you to do more additional work in your title."

Till now, slow loading times have been a major reason for disappointments in gaming experiences. The newest AAA titles require a great deal of time to load even on high-end setups. In such a case, the DirectStprage is a smart solution to the issue. Gamers are already excited to welcome Microsoft’s effort in making Windows the most celebrated gaming platform ever.