Info DirectStorage on PC benchmark

[igor_kavinski]

DirectStorage shows minor load-speed improvements in real-world PC demo | Ars Technica

Lands on PC with a whimper. GPU decompression still pending. Oh Microsoft, why are you so slow?

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I wish the article detailed what the speeds/actual load times should look like with GPU decompression.

A lot of these features get played up a bunch in demos and presentations, but don't really manifest the same kinds of gains in the real world.

In the article, direct storage doubles the m.2 ssd transfer rate but only reduces the actual load time by ~20%.

M.2 pci-e drives are already blazing fast and there are diminishing returns and other bottlenecks that will keep gains from being fully realized.

 

[TheELF]

In the article, direct storage doubles the m.2 ssd transfer rate but only reduces the actual load time by ~20%.

What percentage of a game is I/O? Of course using 100% of your CPU will produce different numbers than only using a few percent.
Also 20% out of nothing is nothing to sneeze at, for CPUs that could easily be two generations of improvements in gaming.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

What percentage of a game is I/O? Of course using 100% of your CPU will produce different numbers than only using a few percent.
Also 20% out of nothing is nothing to sneeze at, for CPUs that could easily be two generations of improvements in gaming.

- If something takes 2.5 seconds to load, but with DS takes 2.0 seconds to load, its a 20% reduction in load times, but in absolute terms isn't really going to change much for the end user. And to your own point (which I agree with) how much of a game's performance is dependent on I/O? There are likely a number of other bottlenecks that will prevent DS from being some sort of silver bullet for all of our performance woes.

All I'm saying is I'm not sure DS should be hyped up as if its current implementation is leaving a bunch of performance on the table. M.2 Pci-e SSDs are already warp 10 by rust drive standards and are still substantially faster than SATA SSDs. We're just really deep in diminishing return territory in terms of storage speed vs practical impact.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Not right now but for next generation games, loading and swapping out 4K textures from SSD to RAM or VRAM will need DIrectStorage. Almost all current games have been designed without DirectStorage in mind. Once PCIe 4.0 SSDs with 5 GB/s read speeds become the minimum requirement, DIrectStorage won't be needed for acceleration anymore. It will be needed just to RUN the game.

 

[TheELF]

All I'm saying is I'm not sure DS should be hyped up as if its current implementation is leaving a bunch of performance on the table. M.2 Pci-e SSDs are already warp 10 by rust drive standards and are still substantially faster than SATA SSDs. We're just really deep in diminishing return territory in terms of storage speed vs practical impact.

This is being developed for the consoles though, just like dx12/mantle was, and there they don't have an abundance of cpu power to get m.2 up to warp 10, every little bit counts for the consoles and with MS making the xbox they need to hype it up as much as possible so that game devs start using it, rather sooner than later.
If they can free up a bit of CPU power to give more power to the GPU, even that would be a benefit for consoles.

 

[quikah]

This is being developed for the consoles though, just like dx12/mantle was, and there they don't have an abundance of cpu power to get m.2 up to warp 10, every little bit counts for the consoles and with MS making the xbox they need to hype it up as much as possible so that game devs start using it, rather sooner than later.
If they can free up a bit of CPU power to give more power to the GPU, even that would be a benefit for consoles.

That is not really true for current consoles. They have lots of CPU power available (8core/16 thread AMD Zen 2). Previous gen had awful CPUs, but this doesn't work on those.

 

[TheELF]

That is not really true for current consoles. They have lots of CPU power available (8core/16 thread AMD Zen 2). Previous gen had awful CPUs, but this doesn't work on those.

They have 8/16 cores but they have to run at ridiculously low clocks due to power and heat, this is why I said: "If they can free up a bit of CPU power to give more power to the GPU, even that would be a benefit for consoles."
Also both consoles have the same amount of cores so having any advantage over the competition is a big deal.

 

[quikah]

They have 8/16 cores but they have to run at ridiculously low clocks due to power and heat, this is why I said: "If they can free up a bit of CPU power to give more power to the GPU, even that would be a benefit for consoles."
Also both consoles have the same amount of cores so having any advantage over the competition is a big deal.

What? Series X runs at 3.8GHz, Series S runs at 3.6GHz, PS5 runs at 3.5GHz.