Windows 10 Will Support Game-Boosting DirectStorage Tech After All

Does it matter if an SSD uses PCIE 3.0 or PCIE4.0 at the moment? It doesn't look like they have maxed out bandwidth on PCIE 3.0 x16 slots yet, with NVME (PCIE 3.0 has a max data rate of 16GB/s). Obviously, if the price is nearly the same, get a PCIE4 ssd (but main thing is to buy a high spec model by the looks of things).

Also, PCIE5.0 next year, so might as well wait for that, the tech seems to be improving swiftly.
 
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g67575 said:
Does it matter if it's PCIE 3.0 or PCIE4.0? It doesn't look like they have maxed out bandwidth on PCIE 3.0 yet, with NVME. Obviously, if the price is nearly the same, get a PCIE4 ssd (but main thing is to buy a high spec model by the looks of things).

Also, PCIE5.0 next year, so might as well wait for that, the tech seems to be improving swiftly.
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pci.e 3 bandwidth for nvme ssds is already maxed out, by a far margin

bcoz nvme ssds get pcie x4 bandwidth, not 16x

pcie 3 4x bandwidth is like 4 gb/s or something like that so anything above 3.5 gb/s pushes its limits

i dont know if rtx io hack will help 3.5 gb/s pcie connection to push 7 gb/s data stream. we shall see but that's a key part of xbox sx

i
 
Are there any reasonably high performance 1tb NVME drives, with sequential read speeds of 2400MB/s or above in benchmarks (roughly similar so Series X SSD), available for £100 or less yet?

Edit - the best bang for buck 1tb NVME drive I found was the WD Black SN750, which costs between £105-£110, and has read speeds of ~3000 MB/s, in the AS SSD random compressed benchmark, results here:
https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/wd_black_sn750_nvme_ssd_(1tb)_review,17.html

It seems to be a bit faster than the Series X drive (also a Western Digital model).
 
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g67575 said:
Are there any reasonably high performance 1tb NVME drives, with sequential read speeds of 2400MB/s or above in benchmarks (roughly similar so Series X SSD), available for £100 or less yet?

All the 1tb ones ive seen so far with these specs cost between £120-£150, bit too expensive.

Edit - the best bang for buck 1tb NVME drive I found was the WD Black SN750, which costs between £105-£110, and has read speeds of ~3000 MB/s, in the random compressed benchmark, here:
https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/wd_black_sn750_nvme_ssd_(1tb)_review,17.html

It seems to be a bit faster than the Series X drive.
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yes, and that would "in theory" guarentee "xbox" level of ssd performance, by every metric possible (speed, consistency, iops or whatnot)

nvme ssd in xbox consoles are literally wd sn550 models, but i heard that it uses a pcie 4 connection instead of pcie 3, but the ssd itself is still considered pcie 3.0

sn750 is much better than sn550 and share the same characteristics

i'd say it wouldn't be a bad choice, not at all. but console is a different beast where cpu gpu and vram all lives in harmony together on the same chip... our computers are way seperated, lots of different stuff. it will be interesting to see how devs tackle out challenges

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-best-ssd-for-gaming-7012

so if u want to match xbox, u can go cheaper in sn550, theoritically
 
Yeah, I think my only concerns with the 1tb SN750 would be that it needs a heatsink to avoid thermal throttling and it's write endurance is average at 600TBW.

Also, the 2tb version of this drive is significantly more than double the cost for some reason, a sign that NVME SSDs are still not ready to become the mainstream choice.
 
you dont need to concern yourself with tbw, directstorage will be all about reading stuff, not writing them

temps only becomes an issue when you write for prolonged times, otherwise it would not be viable for both ps5/sx to put nvme ssds there

when reading, ssdes do not consume much of a power and mostly stay in sane temps, so no heatsinks necessary if u're a regular user that will only be using it for video games. if u do lots of video editing stuff, rendering stuff all the time, then i guess heatsink might be neyded

and 600tbw should last... veryy looong for a regular user again, and even then most ssds do outlive their tbws if they're quality products (in this case, sn550 is q quality product that will mosty likely outlive its tbw by a far margin. but again, it would take like 6-8 years of heavy usage to push through 600 tbw written for a regular user)

i also got myself a 1 tb ssd 8 months ago and i've written a total of 20 tb so far. lots of games installed, chrome and all that stuff on ssd... i guess i will finish the year around 30 tb written. by that pace, the ssd would reach the 600 tbw mark in 20 years lol :cry:

oh extra edit: its actually 10 months and 18 tb written, yet
 
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my SN750 bought Nov 2019 shows 14TB of total host writes and about 9.5TB total host reads, used as boot drive in PC since last November and secondary drive in a laptop before then. Hits 50C in a disk benchmark currently with the mobo 'heatsink' no idea about sustained temps nor what it ran it in the laptop without a heatsink.
 
Yeah, if the mobo comes with a good heatsink for the drive, then I suppose temps aren't a concern for most NVME SSDs.

TBW depends really, 600TB should be enough to last for many years, as long as the user doesn't keep filling the drive up (1TB doesn't take long with games + file storage etc) then erasing and reinstalling.
 
oguzsoso said:
you dont need to concern yourself with tbw, directstorage will be all about reading stuff, not writing them

temps only becomes an issue when you write for prolonged times, otherwise it would not be viable for both ps5/sx to put nvme ssds there

when reading, ssdes do not consume much of a power and mostly stay in sane temps, so no heatsinks necessary if u're a regular user that will only be using it for video games. if u do lots of video editing stuff, rendering stuff all the time, then i guess heatsink might be neyded

and 600tbw should last... veryy looong for a regular user again, and even then most ssds do outlive their tbws if they're quality products (in this case, sn550 is q quality product that will mosty likely outlive its tbw by a far margin. but again, it would take like 6-8 years of heavy usage to push through 600 tbw written for a regular user)

i also got myself a 1 tb ssd 8 months ago and i've written a total of 20 tb so far. lots of games installed, chrome and all that stuff on ssd... i guess i will finish the year around 30 tb written. by that pace, the ssd would reach the 600 tbw mark in 20 years lol :cry:

oh extra edit: its actually 10 months and 18 tb written, yet
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When direct storage was announced for consoles and then PCs it was funny to see all the comments "omg ssd going to overheat" and "omg I'll have to replace the drive in one year from all the writes". The reality is that direct storage and console and PC has a negligible if any affect on drive temperature or life above the standard day to day stuff people already do.


And (not that there is) but if somehow direct storage did create an issue for drive life, there is no way in hell Microsoft and Sony would have allowed its use in their machines that are supposed to last up to 7 years between generations.

We're coming up to 1 year now since the next gen machines launched so if we suddenly start getting users complaining about their console won't boot then we'll know the half glass empty group were right
 
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Grim5 said:
That's not how this works, direct storage scales
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If the only goal is just faster loading then yes it is fine. If we want devs to really push it to the limits, maybe try and incorporate some gameplay element because of it then on PC they will need to catar to windows 10.

It also really needed a minimum speed requirement, so that devs know with some level of certainty what they can expect.
 
Chuk_Chuk said:
If the only goal is just faster loading then yes it is fine. If we want devs to really push it to the limits, maybe try and incorporate some gameplay element because of it then on PC they will need to catar to windows 10.

It also really needed a minimum speed requirement, so that devs know with some level of certainty what they can expect.
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Youre not going to see a ratchet and clank type game on PC for quite some time, direct storage will not change that.

you can't build your game around such a crucial element when you cannot control the amount of storage bandwidth available.

direct storage is going to make pc games load faster and the faster your gpu is and the faster the ssd is, the faster the game will load but that's it.

Perhaps in several years when the steam survey shows that 50% of users have a pcie3/4 ssd then we'll see games change but until then it's unlikely
 
Grim5 said:
Youre not going to see a ratchet and clank type game on PC for quite some time, direct storage will not change that.

you can't build your game around such a crucial element when you cannot control the amount of storage bandwidth available.
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I think with time we will get creative uses within games because of these direct storage type technologies.

Regarding your second sentence, that is my point. MS should have guranteed devs a minimum baseline, so they know what they are working with. What will most likely happen is that devs will use RAM to make up for it. (I assume loading from RAM to VRAM is faster than any direct storage like technology.)

Grim5 said:
direct storage is going to make pc games load faster and the faster your gpu is and the faster the ssd is, the faster the game will load but that's it.
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Not going to lie, i think it is a little dissappointing if faster loading times is all we can expect on PC.

Grim5 said:
Perhaps in several years when the steam survey shows that 50% of users have a pcie3/4 ssd then we'll see games change but until then it's unlikely
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Agreed.
 
g67575 said:
Are there any reasonably high performance 1tb NVME drives, with sequential read speeds of 2400MB/s or above in benchmarks (roughly similar so Series X SSD), available for £100 or less yet?
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I paid £137 for a 1TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus recently. Performance on my Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 5 is excellent:

imY7w1G.jpg

Personally I highly doubt the storage stack differences between 10 and 11 will yield any meaningful performance differences in at least the first gen of PC games utilising DirectStorage. Maybe in resolutions of 4K+ the difference could be more beneficial but even then.... I'm still not confident there will be anything meaningful in it on systems with half decent hardware to make use of it.
 
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