Are you DirectStorage ready?

mrk · 7 Feb 2023 at 12:12

I got Forspoken to test the benchmark with for DS, ran it on my 970 Evo Plus 1TB which is gen 3 and got the following with the custom Ultra preset with extra high textures set and with DLSS Quality.

I noticed that the first run of the benchmark the load times were longer by several seconds, and the 2nd run was what you see above. The screenshot #2 for example took 6.7 seconds to load on the first run. So not sure that has something to do with caching or what but it's Direct Storage so you'd expect direct streaming lol.

Will run again when the Sabrent Rocket 4 plus is installed this eve for a comparison between gen 3 and gen 4.

chrcoluk · 7 Feb 2023 at 16:24

mrk said:
I got Forspoken to test the benchmark with for DS, ran it on my 970 Evo Plus 1TB which is gen 3 and got the following with the custom Ultra preset with extra high textures set and with DLSS Quality.

I noticed that the first run of the benchmark the load times were longer by several seconds, and the 2nd run was what you see above. The screenshot #2 for example took 6.7 seconds to load on the first run. So not sure that has something to do with caching or what but it's Direct Storage so you'd expect direct streaming lol.

Will run again when the Sabrent Rocket 4 plus is installed this eve for a comparison between gen 3 and gen 4.

My question is, did you have any stuttering? stutter I think is a much bigger issue than whether something loads in 1 second vs 10 seconds.

Interestingly I noticed playing an old DX9 game on PC (lightning returns) is a stutter fest in certain areas, but the same game on the Xbox Series S, I have never seen it perform so well, and on that its running inside an xbox 360 emulator, so does make me wonder if on consoles if a variant of direct storage also exists for older games.

mrk · 7 Feb 2023 at 16:59

I did indeed see some stuttering whilst the benchmark was running. Even though the fps was consistent, ther ewas stuttering as if it was loading stuff on the fly. I will observe the same run with the Sabrent when that's installed a bit later to see if the stuttering is there too. I suspect it will be because the game engine is quite pants really lol.

mrk · 7 Feb 2023 at 22:53

And here we are with the Rocket 4 PLus-G installed. Have to say... minimal difference but that was expected given it's not DS1.1.

Avocado bench however is slightly higher.

chrcoluk · 8 Feb 2023 at 15:11

mrk said:
I did indeed see some stuttering whilst the benchmark was running. Even though the fps was consistent, ther ewas stuttering as if it was loading stuff on the fly. I will observe the same run with the Sabrent when that's installed a bit later to see if the stuttering is there too. I suspect it will be because the game engine is quite pants really lol.

Thanks, hopefully DS 1.1 will be the fix then.

Really dont know how dev's can sleep at night releasing a stutter fest game.

Bill Turnip · 8 Feb 2023 at 15:37

chrcoluk said:
Really dont know how dev's can sleep at night releasing a stutter fest game.

On a big ol' pile of cash.

mrk · 8 Feb 2023 at 15:39

I've got to review this Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus G now as it promotes direct storage and has a direct storage firmware etc - How do you review such a thing to praise the merits of a tech that isn't being fully utilised yet in anything

I'll just be up front about the situation I guess!

Bill Turnip · 8 Feb 2023 at 15:43

Sounds like a bit of a hiding to nothing! It's a shame as direct storage would be fantastic to get implemented, but it's taking a very long time to develop.

mrk · 8 Feb 2023 at 15:46

The bulk of the benefit even in DS1.0 form seems to be to those gaming at 1080p as well, where the CPU bottleneck is more evident in modern games.

but then again you have to ask yourself, who is going to be buying fast refresh rate displays, fast SSDs etc and then choose to game at 1080p

At 1440p or above the benefits of direct storage between drives vs GPU etc is marginal (currently) as shown in videos and links posted before.

henson0115 · 8 Feb 2023 at 16:25

mrk said:
The bulk of the benefit even in DS1.0 form seems to be to those gaming at 1080p as well, where the CPU bottleneck is more evident in modern games.

but then again you have to ask yourself, who is going to be buying fast refresh rate displays, fast SSDs etc and then choose to game at 1080p At 1440p or above the benefits of direct storage between drives vs GPU etc is marginal (currently) as shown in videos and links posted before.

according to steam 1080 is still the most popular resolution.. well at least it was the last time i checked.

mrk · 8 Feb 2023 at 16:55

But those are all in games that do not support direct storage

Are those same gamers going to install Forspoken, with system reqs like what it has and needing a gen 3 ssd?

chrcoluk · 9 Feb 2023 at 07:53

mrk said:
But those are all in games that do not support direct storage Are those same gamers going to install Forspoken, with system reqs like what it has and needing a gen 3 ssd?

FF7 remake is a stutterfest even on 720p. :/

I dont think lower resolution rendering reduces shader complexity and texture resolution?

stuie · 9 Feb 2023 at 17:59

Not sure I see the benefits at the moment

Any system that is compatible with this has more than enough CPU and NVME grunt that direct storage won't make a noticeable difference

Anything that's GPU bound will still be regardless of DS or not

Now if it could breath life into older system at 1080 then great, but older systems arnt compatible

AthlonXP1800 · 13 Feb 2023 at 23:15

Compusemble tested Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus G, Western Digital Black SN850X and Samsung 990 Pro.

I wonder when will we see the second DirectStorage game after Forspoken?

g67575 · 14 Feb 2023 at 00:44

I can't wait to see those loading bars shrink by a perhaps a whole second1!1!!!

chrcoluk · 15 Feb 2023 at 16:13

stuie said:
Not sure I see the benefits at the moment

Any system that is compatible with this has more than enough CPU and NVME grunt that direct storage won't make a noticeable difference

Anything that's GPU bound will still be regardless of DS or not

Now if it could breath life into older system at 1080 then great, but older systems arnt compatible

Interesting I formed the opposite opinion, the high bandwidth of NVME uses a ton of CPU and I think with NVME without DS bottleneck moved from storage to CPU. My testing on FF7 remake, improved as I slowed down the i.o, either artificially via UE4, or by putting the game on slower storage, there was none at all when ran from HDD.

AthlonXP1800 · 11 Mar 2023 at 05:07

Hunt Showdown Will Be Upgraded to Support AMD FSR 2.1, DirectStorage, HDR and More

Crytek confirmed that later this year Hunt Showdown will be upgraded to support technologies like AMD FSR 2.1, HDR, and DirectStorage.

wccftech.com

Hunt: Showdown was released 4 years ago in 2019 used CryEngine 5.6 and DirectX 11 features. Now it confirmed future update due later in 2023 will update CryEngine to 5.11 and it will use DirectStorage.

God I hope old games like GTA V, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Far Cry, Star Trek: Online etc will get updates soon to enabled DirectStorage to get rid of annoyed long loading time from menu or every maps on online games. :cool:

AthlonXP1800 · 11 Apr 2023 at 23:03

It looks like Diablo IV may be the second major PC game to support DirectStorage - OC3D

DirectStorage promises decreased CPU overhead and faster loading times It looks like Diablo IV’s beta supports Microsoft’s DirectStorage API, accelerating loading times Thanks to the datamining efforts of Reddit’s Diablo fans, we now know that Blizzard’s Diablo IV beta appears to support...

overclock3d.net

I never played Diablo IV open beta but found it was closed back in March 2023. The game will release on 6 June 2023.

It possible Diablo IV could not be second game to support DirectStorage, maybe April games Star Wars: Jedi Survivor and Star Trek: Resurgence, May game System Shock, June games Aliens: Dark Descent and Layers of Fear could have DirectStorage support.

We will have to wait and see.

Meddling-Monk · 11 Apr 2023 at 23:49

Still only have the demo, but managed to snag a pre-built copy of the Avocado, and ran it with:

7950X, 128GB DDR5 4000Mhz RAM - 64GB of which is a Ramdisk, Nitro+ 7900XTX 24GB

And it gave me this:

Then on the m.2 (Gen4 slot) Crucial P5+ 2TB NVMe

And then finally on the SATA3 Crucial MX500 2TB

Not much reduction going from the NVMe to Ramdisk - bandwidth certainly increased though, but noticeable reduction coming from SATA3.

mrk · 11 Apr 2023 at 23:52

Bandwidth will make no difference to game loads, games load /instantly/ as it is now anyway just by simply leveraging PCIe latency as evidenced by games like Dead Space that load the moment you let go of the mouse button.