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Are you DirectStorage ready?

Here is another odd thing with Forspoken. AMD GPUs manufactured before 2018 cannot run the game - reason is that those cards don't have DirectX 12.1 support and the game doesn't have a fallback to older DirectX versions.

At least not officially, but perhaps someone will figure out a way to force the game into DX11 so older cards can run the game

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
 
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Grim5 said:
Here is another odd thing with Forspoken. AMD GPUs manufactured before 2018 cannot run the game - reason is that those cards don't have DirectX 12.1 support and the game doesn't have a fallback to older DirectX versions.

At least not officially, but perhaps someone will figure out a way to force the game into DX11 so older cards can run the game

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Actually, I'm talking nonsense. :o
 
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Grim5 said:
Here is another odd thing with Forspoken. AMD GPUs manufactured before 2018 cannot run the game - reason is that those cards don't have DirectX 12.1 support and the game doesn't have a fallback to older DirectX versions.

At least not officially, but perhaps someone will figure out a way to force the game into DX11 so older cards can run the game

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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While it might suck for people using older GPU with support been dropped. It's expected really!
You can not build a game with the latest advancements and still keep helping older hardware. At some point you must let go and focus on the here and now it is the only way to keep progressing with bigger and better games worlds.
 
shankly1985 said:
While it might suck for people using older GPU with support been dropped. It's expected really!
You can not build a game with the latest advancements and still keep helping older hardware. At some point you must let go and focus on the here and now it is the only way to keep progressing with bigger and better games worlds.
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Not seen you around much lately bud. What GPU you using?
 
TNA said:
Not seen you around much lately bud. What GPU you using?
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Not really been onto the forums to post much lately I have been reading now and then.

Got a 7900xt but my I7 8700k is holding me back. Looking to upgrade to the Ryzen 3D cache.
But in saying that my game time has reduced to playing more casual games with my little boy lately. I am over the two weeks setting up a racing wheel area so I can get into some more sim racing.
 
Grim5 said:
GPU ain't doing anything, Forapoken uses DS1.0 and DS1.0 doesn't support GPU decompression
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I watched Compusemble Forspoken benchmark on PCIE5 SSD, he confirmed it uses DirectStorage 1.1 but I watched disk read whole time saw loaded level at 1000MB/s for few secs and dropped to 0.1MB/s idle then 50MB/s during gameplay so GPU ain't doing anything?

I bought Forspoken, downloaded and checked it uses DirectStorage 1.1, both dstorage.dll and dsstoragecore.dll version 1.1.2211.304 compiled on 3 November 2022 are the same version used in BulkLoadDemo back in November 2022. I ran Forespken benchmark 4 times. Then I checked DirectStorage on Github to found there is latest DirectStorage build dated 6 December 2022 and I compiled new both dstorage.dll and dsstoragecore.dll version 1.1.2212.610. I replaced both files in Forspoken and BulkLoadDemo, ran Forspoken benchmark noticed load times improved slight. I played the game for 1 hour but GPU ain't doing anything?

Hmmmm I decided to launched HWINFO64 to monitored Samsung 980 Pro 2TB SSD read rate and ran Forspoken for 30 mins then checked the numbers and I was stunned to see maximum read rate was 1000MB/s and average 25MB/s so both GPU and SSD ain't doing anything? I enabled SSD read rate to RTSS and ran the game for 10 mins, the read rate are the same in Compusemble video.

So I decided to ran BulkLoadDemo, it loaded 5.49GB in 0.44 secs used 12.17GB bandwidth but when I looked at HWINFO64 Samsung 980 Pro 2TB read rate maximum 734MB/s and average 3.3MB/s??? :confused: I really cant understand why SSD not doing anything. I should checked HWINFO64 back in November 2022 to see what SSD is doing but I am shocked that SSD and GPU not doing anything, I thought my SSD read rate was 3500MB/s when used DirectStorage on both BulkLoadDemo and Forspoken.

I really dont understand where 5.49GB data and massive 12.17GB GPU decompression bandwidth went. :confused:
 
As per digital foundry's tech review they've done a lot of direct storage testing

* Direct storage isn't using GPU decompression in this game so your CPU has a huge impact on load times - for example the game loads 50% slower with a 6 core ryzen 3600 than with an 24 core Intel 12900k.


* A PC with a 12900k with a 3.5GB/s SSD also easily beats loading time of a PS5 with its 5.5GB/s SSD - this again comes down to the CPU as the CPU in the PC is faster and we'll see this behaviour repeat until we get games that use GPU decompression. The tldr here is that even a Gen 3 Nvme SSD is fast enough to max out Direct Storage performance with current CPUs, the CPU itself is the bottleneck and faster SSDs won't get to stretch their legs until they can use GPU decompression


* Direct Storage runs 30% faster on Windows 11 so the game loads 30% faster compared to the same PC with Windows 10


* DirectStorage in general improves loading times in Forspoken by 100% this was tested by DF by disabling DS in the registry and retesting using the same PC and they found with DS off the same system would take twice as long to load the game


* Here is a big kicker: Direct Storage has a huge impact on framerate. Thisnis not what I expected but due to the volume of game data needed to be loaded while playing the game the CPU can tank game performance - DF measured scenes in the game where if DS is off they get 70fps on their rtx4090 and 130fps if they turn DS on
 
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AthlonXP1800 said:

Not huge different between PCIE5 and PCIE4 in loading time so it seem expensive PCIE5 SSD is a waste of money for now.
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As per above it's a redundant test because the CPU is the bottleneck. You could be using a Gen 7 SSD and it still wouldn't be faster as the CPU can't decompress the asset stream fast enough, even Gen 3 is fast enough that Gen 4 and Gen 5 seem pointless. Maybe if you have a 64 or 96 core EPYC CPU it will be faster but these 16 and 24 core mainstream CPUs we have don't have enough multithreading performance
 
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Does anyone here have an Wd SN850x ssd? I'm keen to see if enabling game mode 2.0 improves performance in this direct storage game
 
Grim5 said:
Does anyone here have an Wd SN850x ssd? I'm keen to see if enabling game mode 2.0 improves performance in this direct storage game
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I do, but I don't have the game and no way will I pay the looney price.

Based on reviews game mode 2 is hit and miss. Would be interning to see if it does improve a bit with direct storage titles, but I can't see it being anything to write home about. Oh look, it loaded 0.1 seconds faster, meh.
 
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Originally this was going to be in both 10 and 11, Microsoft changed their mind to push people on to 11?

Will be interesting to see the take up of this tech on PC, DLSS e.g. is not in any games I play, and if it gets backported to older games.
 
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Grim5 said:
It sounds like DirectStorage is going severely affect drive lifespan of you use it, unless you have a drive with firmware designed to mitigate the effect

"
Traditionally, “real world” consumer performance metrics have focused on 4KB accesses at low queue depths ranging from 1 to 4, but DirectStorage will use large random read accesses at very high queue depths. So here we’re dealing with large 32KB+ block sizes and a 512+ queue depth instead, which is representative of a potential DirectStorage workload. In fact, we should anticipate I/O up to 1MB in size, with 64KB being a typical target for consistency.

This type of workload also challenges a drive’s endurance due to 'Block Read Disturb,' a process that creates wear on frequently-read blocks, thus reducing endurance. Managing this condition is exceptionally important with DirectStorage SSDs — each block of game data can experience up to 20,000 page reads per hour over a 60 to 100GB span of the drive.

Block Read Disturb is a negligible condition with standard drives. However, the new firmware needs to maintain the flash due to the intense nature of DirectStorage workloads, all while still prioritizing host I/O requests. Hammering the flash with reads introduces bit errors over time which can temporarily impact performance, but drive access remains in high demand. Phison has developed smart scheduling for maintenance with adaptive wear algorithms that seamlessly work in the background so that performance remains consistent with minimal additive wear."
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Found a pdf on this, yeah seems it increases bit error rates, and the document says the same rememdy as you said which is using occasional refreshing to work around it.
 
Grim5 said:
They highlight the asset load time in red, but look further down to see what's actually more important - the transfer rate on DirectStorage without GPU decompression is 2.4GB/s and CPU is smashed at 100% load and with GPU decompression on it's a full 7GB/s and CPU is chilling at 15% load.

You can see why no developers have jumped to launch with DS yet, GPU decompression is what makes DS tick.

Without GPU decompression the CPU gets smashed to try and load textures into memory and it's bottlenecking the transfer rate to just 2.4GB/s but with decompression the CPU bottleneck is completely gone and the data can transfers at the full 7GB/s of the PCIE4 SSD into memory
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Might finally end the unreal engine problem of stuttering when streaming assets in.
 
Grim5 said:
Game built for DirectStorage technology on PS5 comes to PC, but developer doesn't enable DirectStorage for PC version

Can you guess what happens? Stuttttttttteeeeeerrrrrrrssssss

Nothing is pre cached, the game just loads in assets and textures when they need to appear on screen resulting in an endless stream of stuttering and frame drops as the PC architecture is unable to load the data to vram fast enough


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Yeah too lazy to reoptimise for the PC, FF7 remake had same issue.

I and others found you throttle the streaming i/o to fix the stutters, but of course that increases loading times and texture pop in. It was DF that recognised and reported on FF7 remake as well, seemingly other content creators either not noticing or bothering to report on it.
 
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It /is/ fine as the avocado benches have shown. You can get excellent DS perofrmance from a half decent Gen 3 NVMe drive onwards. Depending on extra cost of a gen 4 or greater could likely end up being diminishing returns.

Edit*

Gen 3 1TB 970 Evo plus:
5alkc8Z.png

SATA SSD (8TB 870 QVO):
2A4og0a.png

Will add a Gen 4 Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus G on Wednesday evening above :p
 
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Found a copy of the BulkLoad Demo to try on my laptop
12800HX, 3070Ti, 1TB Micron MTFDKBA1T0TFH



I'd like to buy a second drive, but not sure if a sabrent plus-g might be wasted in this.
 
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