DirectX 12, Direct Storage 1.1 is coming this year? to take your SSDs!

[Quackers101]

Summary

Microsoft announced to have directstorage out this year? with GPU decompression.

Using more of your GPU, less CPU and more usage for storage devices.

 

"To get a more tangible sense for the possibilities, we built a highly optimized sample (below). It shows that when DirectStorage is running with GPU decompression vs CPU decompression, scenes are loading nearly 3x faster and the CPU is almost entirely freed up to be used for other game processes."

Quotes

Quote

DirectStorage enabled games installed on NVMe drives should expect to see reductions in load times by up to 40%. After enhancing this part of the pipeline, developers will want to improve decompression performance next.

 

With DirectStorage 1.1, we present a new compression format, contributed by NVIDIA, called GDeflate.

Quote

To Note
- DirectStorage games will work on both Windows 10 and Windows 11, but there are additional optimizations in the IO stack available to Windows 11 users

- Any DirectX 12 capable GPU that supports Shader Model 6.0 will be able to take advantage of the new feature, we recommend a DX12 Ultimate capable card.

My thoughts

Finally we might see some that direct storage people wanted to see, but has to be added and maybe updated in most directx 12 titles.

 

Sources

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directstorage-1-1-coming-soon/

[porina]

Another sauce: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17613/microsoft-directstorage-11-with-gpu-decompression-finally-on-its-way

 

Note it is getting to devs this year, who knows how long it'll be until it is in a game you'd want to have. Maybe there'll be some tech demos sooner, but it could be some way off yet.

[StDragon]

Would it be difficult for existing games to be patched to make the appropriate DX12 calls to take advantage of this?

[LapsedMemory]

There are very few new technologies these days that make one think "That's so obvious, why didn't we think of that before?!" and even fewer advancements that provide such an enormous potential boost to current standards in just a single product generation.  

 

DirectStorage ticks both of those boxes.  Really looking forward to seeing what it can do in the next few years.

[Eigenvektor]

23 minutes ago, StDragon said:

Would it be difficult for existing games to be patched to make the appropriate DX12 calls to take advantage of this?

If a game isn't designed with this feature in mind, you'll probably not see much advantage outside of maybe faster load times.

 

The real benfit comes from being able to load large assets at runtime, so you could have much more detailed models/textures for open world games. That would likely make it unusable for people with HDDs.

 

Pretty sure the engine/game needs to be designed around this feature, not something you can easily tack on after the fact.

[ZetZet]

I think the impact for PC games will not be as big as it is for consoles though. If you think about it your average 2022 gaming build will have 32GB of RAM and 8-16GB of VRAM, when consoles have 16 combined RAM. PC's can have slower storage and compensate by stuffing more things into RAM/VRAM. 

 

This feature will come alive when next-gen consoles come out, which is still very far away.

[BachChain]

Meanwhile, 1.0 still has basically zero adoption. "We swear you'll be able to use it eventually"

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

4 hours ago, Quackers101 said:

Summary

Microsoft announced to have directstorage out this year? with GPU decompression.

Using more of your GPU, less CPU and more usage for storage devices.

 

"To get a more tangible sense for the possibilities, we built a highly optimized sample (below). It shows that when DirectStorage is running with GPU decompression vs CPU decompression, scenes are loading nearly 3x faster and the CPU is almost entirely freed up to be used for other game processes."

Quotes

My thoughts

Finally we might see some that direct storage people wanted to see, but has to be added and maybe updated in most directx 12 titles.

 

Sources

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directstorage-1-1-coming-soon/

This is partially why I have started suggesting PCIE4 SSD's to people for new builds

[ewitte]

Forspoken is supposed to support directstorage but they pushed it to January 24th.  If we can start seeing more titles they will overallocate VRAM with directstorage buffer I can get more use out of my 24GB

[LAwLz]

Interesting that they are about to release version 1.1 when 1.0 is, as far as I am aware, not used in any games yet. 

It's good that they are improving things, but it's hard to get excited for something that was announced over 2 years ago that still does not have any adoption.

I am not sure I buy the whole "games needs to be designed from the group up around it so we won't see it for a while" argument either, since even games not designed around it would see benefits from my understanding of it.

 

Oh well, let's hope we start seeing games use it soon. 

 

 

 

15 hours ago, CHICKSLAYA said:

This is partially why I have started suggesting PCIE4 SSD's to people for new builds

There is no need to get a PCIe 4.0 SSD to take advantage of this.

There are plenty of PCIe 3.0 SSDs that will work just fine, and potentially even better than some PCIe 4.0 drives. Don't get too caught up on the PCIe generation when looking at SSDs.

[porina]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Interesting that they are about to release version 1.1 when 1.0 is, as far as I am aware, not used in any games yet. 

That made me ask the question, what was version 1.0 offering? Regardless, I have to wonder are we yet at the point where game devs disregard optimising for HD entirely, and make better use of SSDs combined with directstorage. Even if at a basic level it offers no more than faster loading times, I'll take it.

 

Edit: to answer myself, from the Anandtech link earlier:

Quote

Earlier this year Microsoft rolled out DirectStorage 1.0, which implemented the I/O batching improvements, but not the GPU decompression capabilities. This is where DirectStorage 1.1 will come in, as it will finally be enabling the second (and most important) aspect of DirectStorage for PCs.

I don't know how much 1.0 alone would have helped, but 1.1 sounds like it should really offer significant improvements once supported.

[Doobeedoo]

Finally, the missing part that 2as needed because no point to it without GPU decompression. Now for this to finally roll out and devs starting to use it. 

The new soon to release WoW expansion is bumping sys req specs and. It already used DX12 and highly recommended SSD new req require DX12 and SSD I take it. Maybe it will work on HDD we'll see. But makes sense for them to use DS for this game. It always benefited from SSD though. 

[tikker]

23 hours ago, Quackers101 said:

we built a highly optimized sample (below)

Any speedup is welcome, of course, but the use of the words highly optimised sample do plant some slight uncertainty. If highly optmised means 3x, what kind of speed up can we expect in an average case?

[GoodBytes]

Modern games rely on engines, in-house or third-party. There is also R&D that is needed to know how to properly take advantage of such a feature.

As a result, we can only expect games 4-5 years from Direct Storage release before we start to see games with it. Make that 3 years for it to just check the box, similar fashion to Ray Tracing in games or when a new DirectX version is out, and actual proper implementation only a few years later.

 

Heck, even the PS5 only has 1 game that uses the equivalent technology of the console and that is a Sony game: Rachet & Clank, which, being a demo of the feature, had hands on of the APIs and console quite early and have a lot of help (financially and engineering) from Sony to the studio to make this feature be utilize.

 

What is needed in the PC space is a big game title like Crysis, that would act as a tech demo of the feature and sale well.  This will boost studio justification to their investors and publishers on the resources needed in getting that "much needed feature" for future games. Like Crysis who not only brought detailed visuals, but also plants and trees that react with the player as they touch/interact with it. Now, this is a common feature in big, high budget games. It passed from "nice to have" to "We MUST have it... Infact, the requirement comes from the publisher itself who is funding the game!"

 

 

[porina]

5 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

we can only expect games 4-5 years from Direct Storage release before we start to see games with it. Make that 3 years for it to just check the box, similar fashion to Ray Tracing in games or when a new DirectX version is out, and actual proper implementation only a few years later.

I'm hoping some will take advantage of low hanging fruit long before then. If I understand it correctly, one such scenario is to offload to GPU what is currently done with CPU, and if that offers a tangible reduction in loading time I'll take it. This doesn't sound as challenging as making games dynamically load more.

[Forbidden Wafer]

25 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Modern games rely on engines, in-house or third-party. There is also R&D that is needed to know how to properly take advantage of such a feature.

As a result, we can only expect games 4-5 years from Direct Storage release before we start to see games with it. Make that 3 years for it to just check the box, similar fashion to Ray Tracing in games or when a new DirectX version is out, and actual proper implementation only a few years later.

I thought Unreal 5 Nanite used DirectStorage to load geometry faster. If they don't use it, it is even crazier it works that well.

[Mihle]

24 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

I thought Unreal 5 Nanite used DirectStorage to load geometry faster. If they don't use it, it is even crazier it works that well.

I don't think any games that uses Nanite is out yet?

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Interesting that they are about to release version 1.1 when 1.0 is, as far as I am aware, not used in any games yet. 

It's good that they are improving things, but it's hard to get excited for something that was announced over 2 years ago that still does not have any adoption.

Developers may have chosen not to adopt something if the benefits aren't good enough for the effort. Adoption takes time but I suspect it's the former, I don't think 1.0 really had much value personally.

[Forbidden Wafer]

28 minutes ago, Mihle said:

I don't think any games that uses Nanite is out yet?

I believe that is the case, but there are Nanite demos out and it is fantastic.

[StDragon]

6 hours ago, Doobeedoo said:

Finally, the missing part that 2as needed because no point to it without GPU decompression. Now for this to finally roll out and devs starting to use it. 

The new soon to release WoW expansion is bumping sys req specs and. It already used DX12 and highly recommended SSD new req require DX12 and SSD I take it. Maybe it will work on HDD we'll see. But makes sense for them to use DS for this game. It always benefited from SSD though. 

Unless the textured assets are in GDeflate format, then it won't be utilizing DS 1.1.

 

Quote

The vast backwards compatibility of GDeflate means that game devs can essentially hit the ground running here on DX12 games – anything worth running a new game on is going to support DirectStorage and GDeflate – but the fact that it involves game assets means that full DirectStorage 1.1 support cannot be trivially added to existing games. Developers would need to redistribute (or otherwise recompress) game assets for GDeflate, which is certainly do-able, but would require gamers to re-download a large part of a game. So gamers should plan on seeing DirectStorage 1.1 arrive as a feature in future games, rather than backported into existing games. -Anandtech

IMHO, I think it would be trivial for games to be backported and offered in Steam as one of two formats; original, and DS 1.1 optimized.

 

[Doobeedoo]

21 minutes ago, StDragon said:

Unless the textured assets are in GDeflate format, then it won't be utilizing DS 1.1.

While nothing official yet, they probably will do it eventually if it's not on release. They mentioned multiple times already about SSD improvements for the game. 

[LAwLz]

41 minutes ago, StDragon said:

Unless the textured assets are in GDeflate format, then it won't be utilizing DS 1.1.

 

IMHO, I think it would be trivial for games to be backported and offered in Steam as one of two formats; original, and DS 1.1 optimized.

Not sure where that quote is from but that argument for why we won't see it backported sounds like BS to me.

Sure, people would have to redownload the game if they wanted to take advantage of the faster load times, but only people who already had the game installed would have to do that.

Just make it so that "from now on, anyone who downloads the game will get faster load times". Simple. People with the game already installed won't get affected, and everyone who download the game from now on gets to benefit from faster load times and lower CPU usage. It's win-win. The people who already had the game installed can choose to uninstall and reinstall it if they want as well.

[StDragon]

33 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Not sure where that quote is from but that argument for why we won't see it backported sounds like BS to me.

From Anandtech published yesterday.

 

The Steam client already has insight into a client's PC specs. It would be real easy to offer the DS 1.1 optimized version as the default download. In fact, I'll go so far as to say there could be far more DS 1.1 backported titles available than new DS 1.1 only releases for the first few years.

[Quackers101]

9 hours ago, tikker said:

Any speedup is welcome, of course, but the use of the words highly optimised sample do plant some slight uncertainty. If highly optmised means 3x, what kind of speed up can we expect in an average case?

It's the sample the use, so yes it wont be like that. but you could likely see 2x performance increase when it comes to loading etc. Using more of your SSD and less CPU. At least something around that mark, although troubleshooting and to make it work would take time, and to make it work as it should (more so if the game was done without it from the start). Some devs really want to have an easier time with shaders, as both intel and nvidia having their shader reordering/management so if one could make easier use for shaders too, which can become complicated with more you add.

[AlwaysFSX]

On 10/14/2022 at 9:41 AM, LapsedMemory said:

"That's so obvious, why didn't we think of that before?!"

Spinning drives typically