When the Xbox Series X launched it boasted Xbox Velocity Architecture which offered vastly reduced load times for gamers. At the time, Microsoft promised that it would be bringing that same technology to PC in the form of DirectStorage.
Now Microsoft has announced that it's finally available.Â
Though we all know that NVMe storage is currently the fastest way to load games and your operating system, there are still bottlenecks holding that performance back. Current storage APIs are not optimised to handle the masses of data being passed through the system.
Modern games are complex and have a lot more graphical data that needs to be loaded in order to be enjoyed fully and even with an NVMe SSD, but that data flow isn't being fully optimised.
Now the DirectStorage API is set to change those things in future, meaning that even detailed game worlds will be loaded faster than ever.Â
It also means that gamers will finally be able to fully take advantage of drives that offer as much as 7,000MB/s read speeds. It's worth bearing in mind though that this is the promise for future games:
"Starting today, Windows games can ship with DirectStorage. This public SDK release begins a new era of fast load times and detailed worlds in PC games by allowing developers to more fully utilize the speed of the latest storage devices."
The games need to be crafted with DirectStorage in mind to take advantage of it. There aren't any current games that support it but there may well be in the near future. We're expecting to hear more at the Game Developers Conference.Â
The good news is though, that DirectStorage will work with both Windows 10 and Windows 11. So you don't need to worry if you're not using Windows 11 yet.Â
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