Xbox Technology Will Speed Up PC Gaming
DirectStorage known from Xbox consoles could speed up PCs as well. Up to 40% less CPU load and faster loading games are possible. The API has some requirements, though.
Photo above: Unsplash / Billy Freeman
- DirectStorage will boost PC gaming performance;
- Up to 40% less CPU load and shorter loading games.
Technology present in Xbox consoles will help boost PC performance. Microsoft unveils DirectStorage interface for Windows 10 and Windows 11. When combined with an NVMe SSD it will speed up video games and reduce CPU usage by up to 40%.
Cooper Partin, senior software engineer at Microsoft and a member of the DirectStorage team for Windows, explains the API in a YouTube video. Less CPU load and faster loading of games The benefits lie in better hardware utilization - it takes fewer CPU cycles to read data from a disk.
However, to take full advantage of DirectStorage, we will need Windows 11 and an NVMe SSD. The technology will also work with Windows 10 from version 19H1, but with less effect. Of course, also the game must have implemented support for this API.
So far we know of one title that will support DirectStorage - it's Forspoken. Thanks to the technology, Windows 11 and the presence of adequate hardware, game loading time is expected to be reduced from 10 to as little as one second.
So far, however, it is not likely that the players will switch to Windows 11 in large numbers simply because of DirectStorage. There are more reasons, of course, but the optimization technology itself can only attract gamers if there are more titles that support it.
